Two years (twenty-six months) since my finger last grazed the shutter release of my camera. Let there be no mistake about it: first of all, I've put a lot more effort into my job (my real job), which is web development. I'd been maturing for three years in the communications agency where I'd been hired straight out of school, and then it was time to take the plunge and set up my own business, which took up a lot of my time. The other main reason was that I moved (very) far from the southern coast to Saint-Étienne near Lyon. It took me a long time to dig out my camera, buried in its bag at the back of my desk, my attention diverted by so many things. I don't know what prompted me to do it today, but once I'd made the decision, it all happened very quickly. The Loire is the exact opposite of the experience I had on the coast: where in the south wastelands are an endangered species, rehabilitated one after the other, here they thrive and take root in the scenery to the point of becoming an integral part of it. Mines, factories and stores live and die without anyone daring to dislodge them. So I'm opening a new album, for this year 2014, and praying that by December, its white pages will be covered in rust and dust. This first series I'm doing gently, with Badan's Rotonde Ferroviaire. It was *very* difficult to get back into the swing of things - as if someone had broken my legs after I'd fallen off my bike and I needed to get back in the saddle. My eye asleep, my photographic reflexes dulled, my hands stammering in front of my camera, which I struggled to control like in the good old days. Those details in the textures, those play of colors I was so fond of, my eyes now struggle to discern, which explains their temporary absence in these images. The photos that follow are far from what the potential of the place promised; there are a handful that I really like, but it will never be a series as dear to me as some from two years ago. That said, it's a refresher series, a re-dive into the roughcast scum I hold so dear. Not my best release, not my worst, simply a preface to this new 2014 album, in the hope that what follows faces you, *photophiles*, with honor.