France Taught Me How NOT to Be a Photographer

Mar 17, 2025

Mike Keesling

A scenic landscape featuring expansive green fields under a vibrant blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. A distant village is nestled near a tree-covered hillside, enhancing the picturesque view.

In April of 2023, my family and I sold nearly everything, left Los Angeles, and moved to the southwest of France.

We had done a good amount of scouting and had narrowed the area where we wanted to buy a home to a small 10km x 20km patch of land, and I was looking forward to a retirement full of photography.

Photography was going to be my main hobby. I sold off my film cameras and shipped the rest of my photo gear ahead so that it was waiting for me at our short-term housing. I even joined a photography club in France before we left the States.

I envisioned myself riding around on my bicycle or driving about, stopping here or there, camera bag in hand, and documenting the stunning landscape around me.

Yet here I am, not doing that.

The problem is, I simply don’t want to.

Silhouetted against an orange sunset, two plant sprouts emerge from textured soil. The sun glows in the background, casting a warm hue over the scene. The sprouts have elongated stems and small, curved leaves.

As I write, I look out the window of my office. I can see a couple of old French chateaus, there are some cows in a nearby field, and the sky is filled with magnificent clouds. The low sun in the sky gives me a stunning golden-hour light spilling across the vineyards across the valley. But I won’t take a photo of it. My cameras are disused, the lenses gathering a patina of dust, who knows where the tripod is…

Ok, that’s a little dramatic, I still shoot, but not how or what I thought I would be shooting. The thing is I simply can’t tear my eyes off the countryside. Every minute playing with my camera is a minute I am not taking it all in.

Here I am, coming up on 2 years here, and I still giggle at how beautiful things are here. Even just doing a grocery store errand, I’ll be driving and there will be mist-covered meadows, crepuscular rays beaming through the sky just before the sun crests over the top of the hillside. What do I do? It is an absolutely stunning picture. Do I stop and pull out my camera? No. I slow down, stop if I am able, and just watch.

A man in a plaid shirt and straw hat sits in a wooden chair, holding a banjo. He appears asleep or deep in thought, with a relaxed expression. The setting is rustic, with soft lighting enhancing the texture of the scene.

Every moment spent shooting is a moment I am not looking, feeling, absorbing.

Part of this new life may simply be the wind. There are two derelict windmills from the 1600s within walking distance of my house, to clue you into the wind levels at my house. The light changes in a heartbeat. One minute golden light is streaming through the air, the next moment the clouds occlude the sun and things downshift into an ordinary stunning.

I am the education secretary at the photo club near my house. The number one lesson I teach is intent. Intent is mindfulness’ neighbor across the hall, and maybe I am just practicing a form of mindfulness.

Close-up of interlocking industrial gears illuminated by a warm light. The metal gears, with varying tooth sizes, cast intricate shadows, emphasizing their mechanical complexity against the dark background.

Landscape photography used to be my thing, my joy.

I would load the car up the night before, wake up at 4:00 am, haul up north past Santa Barbara, heavy jacket on, roof down if possible and get some shots in around dawn. Grab breakfast, then hike in some stream beds and take advantage of the canyons’ natural shade.

But I was always very kinetic. Always on the move.

I had a natural tendency to gravitate towards slow gear when I felt myself getting too frenetic. This was a subconscious thing and involved getting into medium or large format.

Film format size has always slowed me down.

Shoot digital, 400 shots, easy.
Shoot medium format, 4 rolls, 48 shots.
Shoot my 4×5, 4 to 6 shots.

So what and how do I shoot now?

I do “studio stuff” in the wee hours when insomnia gets its grips on me. I’ll shoot water from the tap, odd curios, sometimes miniatures. I was shooting the stain in my coffee cups for a while, until I realized I was drinking too much coffee, looking for that perfect stain.

A top-down view of a cup of coffee with frothy, textured surface and rich brown tones. The drink shows varied patterns formed by bubbles and foam, creating an artistic appearance.

I have gravitated towards low fidelity again, playing with compact point-and-shoots and even horrific print-to-thermal-paper cameras.

I usually do the driving, but sometimes I’ll have my wife drive, and I’ll just shoot landscapes, leaning out the window of the car like an excited golden retriever, as they pass by, too fast to savor. Most shots are blurry, sky blown out, but the kinetic joy of the moment is there.

From time to time, usually on tourist outings, I will grab a nice camera and if I see something interesting, try to make something of it.

I do know this is an extreme reaction, and right now I am perfectly happy to sit and see the landscape ahead of me. Maybe one day I’ll go on another early morning photo expedition, but right now, as I finish this article, I think I’ll grab a cup of coffee and watch the sun rise over the cows and the vineyards — I know it will be spectacular.

About the author: Mike Keesling is an Academy Award and Emmy-winning inventor with a long history in photography, cinema, and R&D. His inventions, including the “Image Shaker” and “Squishy Lens” have been contributing to television and cinema for over 25 years. He also has patents in the fields of lighting, color night vision, motion control, and sensing. Having semi-retired in 2022, Mike now spends his time pondering deeper mysteries of life, writing software, and making cameras.