100 cool things in 2023

After reading “100 cool things in 2023” written by Yannick, I thought it would be cool to simply do exactly the same thing. It anchors things, and I like that.

2023 was a very strange year for me. In December 2022, I discovered that Eala, my dog, had cancer. At the end of March 2023, she left us. I am slowly recovering, I admit. It created a drop in creativity that I did not notice at first, and a lower production of photographs.

2023 is the year in which I made the fewest photographs in 14 years of photography. I will talk about that in another post.

To come back to something positive, I will let you discover 100 things that were still pretty cool.

Here are the 100 cool things of 2023

1 - Getting the fève 8 times out of 8 king cakes eaten
2 - Tasting an Armagnac from 1973
3 - Enjoying a good meal with friends at the halls of Pau, Boris <3
4 - Spending time with Max and Clemence in the Basque Country, eating Ossau-Iraty again and again
5 - Several days working as a stable hand in the Landes
6 - Skiing for the first time and having a good time, because apparently I learned quickly
7 - Seeing a lunar halo
8 - Celebrating Seraphine’s birthday
9 - Beef rib and cheesecake for my 31st birthday
10 - Being on @stephane_couchoud’s live and hearing him compliment my photographs
11 - Rebuilding the camper van table in solid oak
12 - Being happy for Tristan and Charles’s Michelin star
13 - Tasting Fabrice’s homemade chocolates
14 - The mountain outing with Raphaelle and Alex to get back into it, picnicking in the snow
15 - Buying bivouac gear
16 - The first bivouac that came from that gear
17 - Anat and Alex treating us so well
18 - Starting to blog more regularly
19 - Because once you build the habit, writing is a pleasure
20 - Hazelnut-flavored coffee after leaving Caliceo
21 - The new Haize bags
22 - The A7R IV and selling all the lenses I no longer used
23 - Climbing that clears the head
24 - Taking part in making photographs for Betabloc
25 - Visiting Ireland with Jeremie (the gnocchi before departure… wow)
26 - Drinking Guinness for weeks afterwards just to remember that moment
27 - Throwing axes
28 - Giving green plants
29 - Shooting a few rolls of film
30 - Spending a wonderful three-day weekend with all the people I love
31 - Taking care of Boris, who ultimately really needed that operation
32 - Spending hours with friends on a couch passing the controller around to play Fortnite
33 - Enjoying the Pyrenees again and again
34 - Talking with every person I cross paths with, even in a queue
35 - Petting every dog I meet
36 - Finding a pleasant and competent vet
37 - The storm at Cirque de Troumouse
38 - Cirque de Troumouse and the hikes, beers, then Gavarnie
39 - Buying the electric scooter to go out taking photographs
40 - Using it to photograph the Tour de France
41 - Sending my first purple climbing problem
42 - Helping Jeremie renovate his house
43 - Swimming in the Gave de Pau and having a drink
44 - The camper van technical inspection passing without anything to report
45 - Receiving Greg and Yves’s zine
46 - Going to Paris to photograph a wedding and meeting Joffrey
47 - Bivouacking at Lac du Montagnon
48 - Swimming in the lake in the morning
49 - Getting tattoos again and again
50 - Trying to photograph the Milky Way randomly without a tripod and getting a photograph I love
51 - Bivouacking among horses
52 - Handheld lightning photographs that slap
53 - Chess games at the shared house
54 - Pizza by the gave after swimming, long live the heatwave
55 - New climbing shoes
56 - The Leica Q3 tattoo
57 - Watching Hunter x Hunter for the thousandth time
58 - Discovering the game Time Bomb
59 - Meeting Adeline
60 - The evening at Laura’s
61 - Going back to Mas Alart
62 - Learning new things about wine again
63 - Creating a photo book and having it printed
64 - Going to the aeroclub with Frederic and Laurence
65 - Testing the X100V
66 - Testing the Leica Q2
67 - Redoing the camper van seals for aesthetic reasons
68 - Inviting Annick to have a drink with us
69 - Smoking Ashton Type 4
70 - Redesigning the photo website
71 - The two days in Collioure
72 - Starting to write in small notebooks
73 - Changing the camper van decoration on a whim
74 - Changing the foams
75 - Candlelit raclette
76 - The SpaceX Starship launch
77 - Getting tattooed again
78 - Making my first YouTube video and enjoying it like crazy
79 - Listening to Vald, listening to too much Vald even
80 - Photographing all the Haize bags together
81 - Getting interested in coffee
82 - Spending time with my nephew Maxime
83 - Visiting the Donjon des Aigles and the photographs I made there
84 - Receiving one kilo of coffee instead of 125 g in an order
85 - Feeding the group of wild cats in Argeles-Gazost
86 to 99 - Honestly I do not know what else to say. Thank you 2023, even though you were a complicated year.
100 - Thinking about 2024 and how much I want to live even more slowly

Kisses