Launching a website when you're passionate about something and heading north with my X100vi

What building lucelenta.art taught me, and what I'm looking for in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin and Aarhus in June

There are far too many Fujifilm recipes on the internet

I say that not to diminish the work of those who publish them. Some have built something serious out of it, and I have nothing against them. I say it because that was the reality I found myself in a few months ago: a photographer who wanted to develop his own recipes, who was looking for inspiration, and who kept getting lost in an abundance without bearings. Too many choices, too many voices, too many promises of "the best recipe for every situation."

That's when the image of the winegrower came to me.

There are winegrowers who produce in large quantities, efficiently, for a market that consumes quickly and without asking too many questions. And there are winegrowers who have a small plot, who know every row, who accept the hazards of weather and vintage, who make their wine with seriousness and with a vision that is entirely their own. Those are the wines I like to drink. Those are the recipes I wanted to craft. This site is the cellar where I keep them.

The vines of the Quintodecimo estate, Mirabella Eclano, Campania, Italy – (Film recipe: OWH Analog)

What nobody tells you about building a website

Launching lucelenta.art was considerable work. I didn't quite expect that, or rather, I knew it would be work, but I didn't know exactly what kind.

Choosing a domain name. Understanding what a hosting provider is and why it's separate from the domain registrar. Setting up a dedicated email address. Choosing a platform and learning to master its subtleties. Writing nine articles in French and in English. Selecting the photographs, naming them according to a consistent convention, writing the alt texts for accessibility. Optimizing the SEO metadata page by page.

Every obstacle solved revealed another one. I stepped back often in order to move forward. I questioned decisions I thought were final. I learned things I didn't know I was going to have to learn.

This site is not perfect. It is the work of a craftsman who learned by doing, and who moved forward with the tools and knowledge he had at the moment he needed them. I trust that my readers will be generous. In return, I will always be open to advice on how to do better. That, too, is part of the spirit of a small plot.

What I took away from all of it is something simple: you need to know what you want, want it truly, do what it takes to get there, never doubt your own abilities and be glad of what passion for something can produce. Passion, here, does the same work as patience before a good lens: it holds your attention where it needs to be, for as long as it needs to be there.

I think this site will speak mainly to the passionate. And the passionate, whatever their field, share this quality, they know what it costs to build something with care. If you're reading this, you probably know what I mean.

June in the north — Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Aarhus

In June, my wife and I are heading north.

I should admit that the itinerary owes a great deal to her. I tend to want to travel through wine regions, to stop in at growers, to talk about a vision of viticulture in a winery. She isn't indifferent to wine, but she suggested Denmark and northern Germany with an argument I couldn't contradict: these aren't major wine-producing regions, so we'll finally be able to do something else.

She's right. And I'm going with my X100vi.

What am I looking for photographically? I don't know yet, precisely and that's as it should be. June in Scandinavia and northern Germany is a light I've never worked with. Long, raking, stretching late into the evening. A northern light that might well give rise to new recipes or reveal, in an unexpected way, the ones I've already crafted.

I'm going without a rigid plan and with an attentive openness to whatever presents itself. That's how I photograph, and that's how I travel.

What I'd ask of you

If you know Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin or Aarhus, if you've photographed there, lived there, if you have a café worth lingering in, a market, a neighbourhood or a street corner that seized you, I'm interested. Write in the comments. That kind of exchange is precisely why this blog exists.

And if you yourself have launched a project that mattered to you — a website, a photographic series, any kind of artisanal adventure — I'd be glad to hear about it. The passionate enjoy finding each other.

— Louis-Martin