Black and White

Just a few images from a film I neglected last year. Enjoy!

Paris Photo 2011

As another November comes and goes so does my third annual trip to Paris for Paris Photo and so here is my third annual blog of photographs from my trip to Paris. Armed of course with my Canon film camera the only difference this year is instead of heading to Paris with my usual motley crew of University friends, I went for a romantic trip with Matthew. We stayed in a hotel the other side of Paris to the normal Republique side, opting this time to stay in the Trocadero, near the Eiffel Tower.

I had another fantastic trip visiting the Musee d'Orsay to see the new Surrealist exhibit as well as many wonderful little shops and cafes and of course the Grand Palais for Paris Photo itself. The weather could not have been nicer, and was unseasonably warm meaning we could walk everywhere allowing for many photo ops. So here you go avid bloggers. Another year of another wonderful weekend in one of my favourite cities in the world, Paree!

Schilte & Portielje

Well it was that time of the year when I jump on to the Eurostar and journey to Paris for Paris Photo weekend. It was held in the Grand Palais this year and I thought it was the best one yet (well out of the three I have seen).

Whilst I could talk about the many beautiful photographers I saw there I want to mainly focus on the works by Schilte and Portielje, who I saw at the Kahmann Gallery stand. I had never heard of the photographers before but fell head over heels in love with their work. The dark black and white portraits were so beautiful, photography and styling wise. They have really inspired me with my project dealing with identity or lack of it and got me straight to experimenting with long exposures. I am absolutely blown away by their photographs and hope you feel the same. So here are a few of my favourites that I saw... I know you'll love them too!

Weekend in Paris

I took a little holiday to Paris over the weekend to see the annual Paris photo, which this year I have to say was exceptional. I fell in love with so many new artists and ended up buying the catalogue again. For those of you who have not heard of Paris Photo, it's a MASSIVE photography exhibiton held in the Louvre for a weekend that major galleries go to, to show various artist's work. You have current photographers such as Martin Parr, Nick Knight and Nan Goldin alongside some of the traditional photographers like Juliet Margaret Cameron and Muybridge along with up and coming artists. (For all you photography enthusiasts it really is worth a visit next year!)

Anyway, back on track, I adore Paris it is such a beautiful city full of culture, art and romance, which led me to take my Canon EOS 300 film camera, with my 50mm f1.4 lens and some expired film to take some hopefully romantic, "arty", Parisienne shots. As I done the main touristy features of Paris, i.e. the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame etc, over the several times I have been, we decided to see less mainstream parts of Paris opting instead to visit several flea markets, small galleries (as well as the Louvre) and many little streets with gorgeous French cafes to eat a lot of cheese and drink a lot of wine and generally get some real photographic opportunities.

I loved the results from the films and wanted to share some of the best ones with you all. I hope you like them as much as I do!

Click on image to enlarge