Certain images capture something of the essence of a place. Or, maybe better, capture some of the most prominent themes of a place. This is one such image for me.
I took this from the window of my study. It shows an old Citroen 2CV car in the middle of the vineyards. Both the vineyards and this particular model of car are SO French!
I used to have a car very similar to this one. It was my first brand new car and probably one of the most fun cars I ever had. You could roll the roof back on sunny days and you could lift out the back seat to either carry bigger objects or use it to sit on while having a picnic. I transported a far too large Christmas tree in it one year, with most of the tree sticking out through the roof!
As was typical of 2CV owners of the time I had a bright yellow “Nuclear Power? No thanks!” sticker on the back. I guess people probably thought they had a good idea of my values when they saw me in that car. And maybe they were right!
Somehow cars have become way more indistinct these days. Do you agree?
I live in a small village near to the town of Cognac and the entire countryside around here is vineyards. Cognac production is THE major industry in this part of the world with dozens of distilleries, barrel-making and bottle making plants, stores selling tractors and other vineyard machinery, factories which make corks and so on.
Cognac is the essence of Cognac!
Since this pandemic began our horizons seem to have shrunk and expanded all at once. Shrunk because we have been spending our lives within tighter limits, traveling less, visiting less, shopping closer to home. It’s kind of refined our habits I think. You might say it’s “distilled” them!
On the other hand it’s expanded our consciousness making us more aware than ever of how interconnected and interdependent we all are on this one small blue marble of a planet.
What would you photograph to capture an essence of the place where you live?
Heroes Not Zombies 
The Duke of Wellington with the cone hat! 🙂
Ha! Excellent!!