Being an inveterate photographer of both architecture and sculpture, it was inevitable that I should find my way to the Bibliothèque Louis Nucéra in Nice. Set in an urban park on the Promenade des Arts, the north tower - la Tête Carré - was designed by Sacha Sosno and houses four floors of offices.

Patterns and repeating elements in architecture have always caught my attention, and the technique of mirroring images is entertaining.

One of our senior instructors at art school was Bob Pfeiff - a former US Navy test pilot - who loved to regale us with flying stories. One of my favourites was of a time he was putting a prototype jet through its paces to see how it performed. The story goes that he was flying at night when he glimpsed the moon through a break in the clouds. He said he turned and aimed straight for the moon, "threw it on full after-burners..." and just flew as far as he could until he ran out of atmosphere and fell back toward the earth.

I made this image for Bob.

The famous tower in Pisa was wrapped in construction scaffolding when I made a recent pilgrimage. The rest of the site was captivating though. This is a somewhat altered view of the interior of the cathedral.

I recently visited the Nice Observatory, renowned for the large dome designed by Gustave Eiffel. On the walk through the grounds, our attention was directed to a line painted on the road by the astronomers. It was explained that this ran along a meridian line between the poles of the Earth. I was reminded of a proposal, made years ago by the Canadian conceptual artist Iain Baxter, to hand-paint a dotted red line on the snow following the Arctic Circle around the entire northern hemisphere. His project was not completed.

Near our house in Nice is an abandoned primary school. The structure is simple and well decayed, however the double front doors are remarkable - inspired even. The surface is a collage of old printer's wooden type. In this detail the keyhole can be seen just left of centre and about a quarter of the way from the bottom.

One of the gentle admonishments we were given in art school was to the effect that, "If you can't make art in your own backyard, travelling halfway around the world won't help you."

Recently I took a walk through our property in Tourtour and collected an assortment of dead weeds and other plant parts that were left behind after the winter mistrals and snow.

In a makeshift shooting tent, I made a series of closeup images celebrating the structure, diversity and elegance of some common and typically unnoticed bits of garden debris.

- Slide show -

Since living in Paris many years ago, I have wanted to photograph the Eiffel Tower but with a different perspective than the usual. This past summer, on our one day in Paris en route to Canada, we stopped by it to have a look and perhaps climb part way up. The crowds were enormous and we couldn't get near the stairs, but I did manage to get this image from the ground.