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.

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.

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.

Scattered throughout the countryside of northern France are many small WWI cemetaries and memorials. These have been left in the places they were created, and life goes on around them. This is a long grass walkway through a farm field, leading to a memorial built inside a bomb crater.

The Canadian Vimy Ridge Memorial, near Arras, stands at the site of one of the most significant battle sites in France. This carved figure represents Canada mourning her fallen sons.

The Pont Romain on the outskirts of Tourtour is one of many ancient artifacts of early settlement in the area. In fact, a medieval structure, the bridge is still in use, an extraordinary testament to traditional engineering and craftsmanship.

One of the principal landmarks in the village of Tourtour is this ancient tower, the Tour de Grimaldi. Attributed to the Saracens and built nearly a thousand years ago, the tower stands sentinel over the valleys below.

Of the different views of the tower that I photographed, this one held the most interest for me. However the sky in the background was uneven and to my eye detracted from the symmetry of the subject, so I tried creating a mirror image version of it. This is the first time that I have altered an image so dramatically.