> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.stillhere.photo/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # You Don’t Have to Go Far to Go Somewhere - URL: https://www.stillhere.photo/you-dont-have-to-go-far-to-go-somewhere/ - Published: 2026-10-08T12:47:37.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T12:47:37.000Z - Author: Laura Stanley - Tags: photography, photos, News, human made I found French photographer Maël Balland's work in the familiar way that many good photographs find us now. Somewhere in the middle of a scroll, stopping me before I quite knew why. It was [this image](https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-feeding-flying-white-bird-3098600/?ref=stillhere.photo) *(pictured above)*. A young man in a small boat, arm stretched, feeding a swooping seagull. For an image so still, there's so much movement. The blurred wings, the ocean current, the sense that this little boat is ready to go somewhere. It took me back to my own youth. Taking my dad’s boat out, or driving a uninsured car around the field before I was old enough to legally drive. Always looking for mischief, adventure and day dreaming of going somewhere. Maybe that’s what I was drawn to in it. Not just the scene itself, but the feeling that going anywhere may take you somewhere. My questions reached Maël while he was on a train crossing France, a setting sun in the window beside him. I pictured him leaving the rush of Paris behind at the end of a workday, watching the view outside his window change from crowded platforms to the rolling farm fields of the French countryside. During the week, he works as a notary in corporate law. On weekends, he heads for the mountains or the ocean, looking for the kind of experience that asks you to slow down, pay attention and get lost in the moment. It is there, in the cold, the water and the open space, that many of his photographs begin. **Q. How did photography first find you?** **A.** I grew up with images. My earliest memories are marked by my father and grandfather, always with a camera in hand, documenting every single scene. They even lived for a time in Nicéphore Niépce’s house. There’s probably some unconscious heritage in that. > I’ve always had this need to materialize memories, to print the moment so I can hold it in my hands and dive back into it later. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/09/pexels-toulouse-3098967.jpg)](https://www.pexels.com/fr-fr/photo/personne-pres-du-bateau-3098967/?utm%5Fsource=gemini) After a difficult dive, the currents had carried Maël and his friend far from their boat. This was the moment (and relief) they finally found it again. **Planier Lighthouse, Marseille, France.* **Q. What keeps you coming back to photography now? What does making photographs give you, or help you notice, that nothing else quite does?** **A.** Grounding and aesthetics. I am not one of those who obsessively chase the “perfect picture” by building everything around it. My approach is the opposite: I first live a raw experience — a dive, a sea expedition, a climb — and the camera simply comes in to highlight the beauty of what I’m going through, giving it a tangible form. In an era where images are disposable and everyone is firing away with their smartphones, taking the time to use a real camera imposes a different mindset. It gives density back to the memory. The image becomes an imprint once again. **Q. When you’re out taking photographs, what are you usually drawn to?** **A.** It’s the overall atmosphere, but it often reveals itself through details. I am drawn to the right gesture, the one that tells the story between the lines: a helping hand adjusting crampons on the ice, a hand tracing a route on a nautical chart, faces marked by effort around a campfire. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/10/pexels-toulouse-18331918--1--1.jpg)](https://www.pexels.com/fr-fr/photo/deux-personnes-sur-le-flanc-d-une-montagne-avec-une-lumiere-18331918?ref=stillhere.photo) At 4 a.m., Maël’s climbing partner gets help adjusting her crampons before the sun begins to soften the frozen snow. On a roped climb, one person’s footing matters to everyone. **Sommet de la Grande Ruine (3,765m), Hautes-Alpes, France.* **Q. Is there a photograph you nearly didn’t take, or one that surprised you afterwards?** **A.** One of an Egyptian truck in the dust. I was driving a 4x4 in the desert. It wasn’t an “aesthetic” scene in the classic sense, just a construction truck kicking up a blinding cloud on a dirt track. I pressed the shutter almost by reflex, without conviction. Yet today, it’s one of the compositions I like most. The image structured itself: the sign with the moon provides an unexpected anchor point in this emptiness, and the two piles of stones frame the action almost geometrically. There is a real contrast between the brutality of the scene — the exhausting work of this man in the dust — and the balance of the final image, which exudes a kind of peacefulness. Even though this man’s work surely isn’t. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/10/CDF0F924-87DC-4C4B-B079-452A493BC7E0.jpeg) One of Maël’s most memorable images, made in the Egyptian desert. **Q. What are you curious to explore next in your photography?** > To live, to experience as many adventures as possible, simple or not, alone or not. I also can’t wait to experience this with my children: to share with them this taste for the simply beautiful, to take the time to contemplate, to take care of nature, and the ability to step out of our urban comfort to go and confront it. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/09/pexels-toulouse-3098796.jpg)](https://www.pexels.com/fr-fr/photo/photo-de-silhouette-de-personne-debout-dans-la-grotte-3098796?ref=stillhere.photo) Inside an ice cave with his brother, Maël remembers the light—and the constant sound of the glacier dripping around them. **Massif des Écrins (3,400m), Hautes-Alpes, France.* **Q. What do you hope someone feels, notices or understands after spending time with your work?** **A.** I hope they want to go on an adventure, to escape. As I like to say, you have to imagine what hides behind a photograph. The idea isn’t for people to admire my picture, but for it to make them want to live their own: sleeping under the stars, waiting for a lighthouse to turn on, getting lost heading up a river. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/09/pexels-toulouse-6534894--1-.jpg)](https://www.pexels.com/fr-fr/photo/rhume-froid-neige-homme-6534894?ref=stillhere.photo) During lockdown, access to the French mountains was forbidden. Maël and his friend decided to stay the night in a remote refuge anyway, thinking no one would find them. They woke to a police helicopter and a hefty fine. **Cirque de Gavarnie (2,230m), Pyrenees, France.* > I am a strong advocate for micro-adventures. I believe we don’t need to travel to the end of the world to get lost; Europe is full of raw territories. If my images can give someone the desire to escape, to explore, or simply to take a deep breath, then I have succeeded. Maybe that is what I saw in the photograph that first made me pause. Not just a bird, a boat, or a fleeting moment on the water, but the feeling that something might be waiting just beyond the frame. Maël’s photographs took me somewhere — back to old adventures, into some of his, and dreaming about the ones I haven’t had yet. Maybe that’s the point. Sometimes you don’t have to go very far to go somewhere.