Now that we've been back a few weeks from Paris, I thought it'd be a good idea to go through all my photos and pick my top ten. First let's run the numbers. I have 1,735 photos in my Paris 2021 Lightroom album. That may sound like a lot, but when you figure that we were there for two months, that only works out to about 30 photos a day. Of those photos, 451 rated two stars or above, which means I'll put them the Apple Photos photo stream that I share with family. Only 152 photos made it into my selects album that we use for our screensaver on our Apple TV. Getting down to that number was hard enough. Getting down to ten? That was almost impossible, but I got there.

I needed some criteria to help out. The first is that I selected only photos that I might sell as a print if someone were to ask. That leaves out photos of family and friends. The next criteria is that I freed myself from worrying about needing to include photos from trip highlights. Certainly I photographed those things, but the photos might not be what I considered my best. After that, I applied a super critical eye to every remaining photo. It had to be evocative of a feeling, place, or time. Finally, I looked at the photos to hone in on those with the strongest compositions.

I haven't bothered to rank order these ten photos, although I will say that the lead photo (Vertigo) is my favorite from the trip at this point. I will show each of the remaining nine photos below.

The past few days, Priscilla and I have been going through an extended series of goodbyes (a bientôt). On Saturday we met up with our friends Ellen and Jean-Pierre to walk the Coulée Verte one last time and then have lunch at a neighborhood bistro, Le Square Trousseau. On Sunday, we took in the service at the American Church in Paris, meeting up with Ellen and Jean-Pierre one last time. Priscilla went back to the ACP later on Sunday to attend a concert with Ellen…“A Night at the Opera”, At the same time I was doing one last photo walk. On Monday, Priscilla and I revisited some of the areas I had walked to the day before.

Late this afternoon Priscilla and I walked to the Seine to say goodbye to Paris with a glass of wine. It is a cool, cloudy day here, so there were no crowds. We had the place to ourselves. Well, all except for a rat that decided he wanted to get by where we were seated.

For lunch, we stopped in at Mokonuts and said our goodbyes to Moko and Omar. We had a “marvelous” time. Marvelous is Moko’s new favorite word.

Tonight we are doing final packing. Tomorrow we will head off in the wee dark hours on Uber to get to the airport with plenty of time. It will feel strange to close the door of this apartment one last time, but this time leaving the keys behind.

​We have had a wonderful time in Paris. I hope you’ve enjoyed traveling along with us.

We are nearing the end of our Paris adventure. I find myself with a bit of melancholy, thinking back on all the wonderful experiences we have had and all the beautiful people we have met. I want to soak up as much of the Paris atmosphere as I can, knowing that we will soon be gone from this city we love so much.

None of this is to say that we aren't happy to be heading home to Minnesota. Priscilla and I are dyed in the wool Minnesotans, of that let there be no doubt. But Paris is a magical place for us. Not our home, mind you, but magical nonetheless.

Tonight I went on a photowalk to a neighborhood in the 11th arrondissement that is on the other side of one of the major streets in our neighborhood, Rue Fauborg Saint-Antoine. To date, I hadn't walked much in this area. It seems that in Paris, around every corner and down every quiet street there is a scene wanting to be captured. I walked slowly tonight, taking it all in, again, knowing that this was one of my last photowalks on this trip.

This feeling of sadness that I have in leaving Paris tells me that we have had a wonderful two months in the City of Light. We have lived as Parisians. We have come to love our neighborhood in the 12th. Tonight I stopped at Le Square Trousseau just to watch and listen to all the children out playing in the park on a Sunday evening. I was mesmerized. I leave you with a short video clip from the park. (Sorry for the bad audio. I'm having a problem with the microphone on my iPhone.)

I've saved up a few experiences that on their own don't warrant an entire post, but strung together just might make a cohesive post. You will have to be the judge of that. First up is my visit to the Buttes Chaumont Park of a week ago.

Buttes Chaumont Park
Buttes Chaumont Park is located in the 19th arrondissement, which is north of us here in the 12th. Since Priscilla was helping Claudia out in her food stall, I decided to take the Metro up to Buttes Chaumont and get some hiking and photography in. Buttes Chaumont is an extremely hilly park, so I definitely got my stair steps in that day. My iPhone says I climbed 34 flights that day while walking nearly 7 miles. The vertical nature of this park yields some fascinating views to photograph. It was a cool, crisp fall day, so I had no trouble walking most of the trails in the park.

Afterward I came upon the neighborhood pétanque courts in full use. This is the French version of bocce ball. They take their pétanque seriously here. The woman shown pitching the ball in this photo had a unique pitching form, and based on the intensity of the conversations when judging whose ball was the closest, she plays for keeps.

Protests
The French love a good protest. Lately, a certain faction have been protesting the vaccine mandate. The way it works in France, you need a Pass Sanitaire to get into restaurants, theaters, museums, and public transport (although they rarely check at the train stations). To get a Pass Sanitaire you need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. You can get a temporary one if you present a negative COVID test, but that only lasts for three days. The good news is that France has a high vaccination percentage, with 68% fully vaccinated, and 76% having at least one dose. France also still has a mask mandate in place. It is quite rare to see someone unmasked in an indoor setting, unless they are eating or drinking. Consequently, the case count has come way down in France.

There are folks, though, who don't like the perceived loss of their liberty. Sound familiar? So they protest. Fortunately, the protests we have witnessed have been peaceful. On the day I made this photograph, I was going out for a late afternoon walk before dinner when I came across this protest. There was a significant police presence escorting the protesters, with lots of sirens blaring and chants coming from bullhorns. Soon the protest passed and I went on with my walk.

Scouting Missions
​One of the things I've taken to doing on this trip is to make scouting runs to locations we might be interested in going to but aren't sure whether they warrant the effort. When we get back to Minnesota, Priscilla is due for knee replacement surgery, so we are trying to ensure that when we go out on expeditions, it's worth it. This past week I made two such runs, one to the Bercy neighborhood in Paris and the other to the village of Crécy la Chapelle, which is about 1-1/2 hours away from Paris by regional train.

Crécy La Chapelle is known to have a nice market that runs on Thursday and Sunday mornings. While it is a quaint and picturesque village, the sidewalks weren't terribly pedestrian friendly, so unless the market was a sure thing, I came away thinking we could pass this one by. We tried hard to locate information online about whether the market was currently operating. With COVID, many of the markets have cut back their hours. One website said the Crécy market was running, another said no, and the town's official website didn't have anything about the market, so we opted not to go.

The other scouting mission this past week was to the Bercy neighborhood, which isn't too far from us but isn't terribly easy to get to because of train lines. I read one blog that listed Bercy as one of the highlights worth seeing in the 12th. After making my scouting run there, I have to disagree. To me it was a big meh. Yes, there's an upscale shopping district, but that doesn't excite us. Paris has plenty of upscale shopping districts. So we are not going to make a return visit to Bercy.

Walkabouts
I think one of the things that spoils us in Paris is just how many fascinating sights there are all around you. It seems that around every corner there's something of interest. The quaint alleyway in the photo on the left below is practically right next door to the Monoprix store in our neighborhood. The beautiful doorway in the middle photo is the home of local artisans who run some wonderful shops in Paris, called Petit Pan. As it turns out, I traipsed down this same alleyway in 2019 and made one of my favorite photos from that trip (far right below).

And then on my walks on the Coulée Verte, I might pop up or down one of the stairways to see what's street side in that neighborhood. The other day I came across this cool Bel-Air sign on one of those up periscope moments.

So for someone who proudly calls himself a walking fool, Paris is a fabulous city to call home for two months. Of course, I almost always have a camera in hand when I go on these walks. The funny thing is, I don't walk to photograph. If anything, the reverse is true, I photograph to walk. Walking is my favorite way to experience a city or an area. I just start walking.

This is one of my photowalk blog posts, short on text and long on photos. Since it was a beautiful, overcast fall day here and we had nothing else planned, I decided to take a walk to the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery while Priscilla relaxed back at the flat. It's just over a one mile walk from our flat, taking you through the 12th & 11th arrondissements and into the 20th, where the cemetery is located.

The fall colors at Père Lachaise were gorgeous. We'd experienced a morning rain shower, so the colors were super saturated. As I walked through the cemetery, it dawned on me that the feeling I had walking around Père Lachaise was much the same as when I walk through the Big Woods of Minnesota. When I'm in the woods I'm keenly aware of the cycle of life, just as I was when walking Père Lachaise. I don't mean this in any kind of a morbid sense. Really it's more of a peaceful feeling.

The parallels between Père Lachaise and the Big Woods carried forward into my photography. In the woods you have to pay close attention to how your image is playing out in the third dimension. The same holds true for photographing at Père Lachaise. The image unfolds as you move from foreground to background.

Père Lachaise is the eternal home to some notable people, including Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf. I managed to find both of their graves. The crowds were light today, so I didn't have to jockey for position to make these photos. There was a small group at Jim Morrison's grave and only a couple folks at Edith Piaf's.

I enjoyed everything about my photowalk today. Priscilla and I plan to go back another day, taking advantage of the Metro to reduce the walking to and from, leaving us plenty of time and energy to walk the huge cemetery.

P.S. As a side benefit of my walk today to Père Lachaise, I happened upon a wonderful looking Kurdish restaurant that is situated on one of the tiny alleyways that Paris is known for. We plan to go check it out some night.

Yesterday Priscilla and I decided to take in the Vivian Maier photography exhibit at the Musée de Luxembourg. We are both great admirers of her photography. The exhibit is quite extensive and the quality of the prints is exceptional.

Afterward, on a whim, we decided to take a walk through the Luxembourg Gardens. This was our first time there. We had no idea how amazing this place is.

We entered the park right at the beginning of the golden hour. The late day fall sunlight gave an otherworldly glow to everyone and everything it touched. It seemed that all of Paris was in the Luxembourg Gardens this day, perhaps playing chess, or engaging in a tennis match, or simply soaking up the sun.

As a photographer who loves photographing people, I was like a kid in a candy shop. I had great light and fantastic subjects who weren’t paying any attention to me. I’m guessing we’re about a week or two away from peak fall color here, so we will definitely be back to the Luxembourg Gardens. Today we are off on the train to Nantes to visit Anna for the weekend. More on that later.

Right around the corner from our flat is the Aligre Market, an open air street market that runs for about three city blocks on rue d'Aligre. The market is open every day but Monday. Near as I can tell this is strictly a produce market. Meat, seafood, and poultry stalls can be found in the adjacent covered market, Marché Beauvau. This is where our friend, Claudia, has her stall, Babbaluscio, where she serves up marvelous vegetarian fare. There is also a large flea market on the plaza just to the east of Marché Beauvau.

The covered market, built in 1779, is one of the oldest in Paris and one of the few still in operation. The street market has its roots in the early 20th century when the nearby Gare de Lyon train station opened. I've read that many people from North Africa living in Marseilles took the train up to Paris at that time, getting off at the new Gare de Lyon station and settling in the area. They opened up street food stalls to make a living. The stalls and permits are passed down through the generations, with many of the stalls now owned and operated by third and fourth generations. This explains the sounds of Arabic being spoken throughout the market.

The Aligre Market is a locals market with zero sense of tourism. The produce is incredibly fresh. On my first visit there I picked up a couple melons, a mango, and some strawberries. They were all out of this world! We've been enjoying fresh fruit with every breakfast and lunch, and sometimes with our afternoon wine and cheese. Today we picked up bananas and apples. Payment is in cash at the street market. They weigh things out on a scale, which shows the amount in Euros. Since I can never understand the amount they are quoting me, I've learned to look at the amount on the scale. In Marché Beauvau, the covered market, you can pay with plastic or contactless payment, as we do with our Apple Watches. It's interesting that it seems more places over here accept Apple Pay than in the States, by my observation. But, if you're buying at the Marché d'Aligre, you'd better bring cash money.

Having a market right around the corner is a marvelous thing. There's no need to drive anywhere for your basic needs. When you factor in the Monoprix a few blocks away (think a shrunken Target), everything you need is available within a short walk. Of course, the market is also a street photographer's paradise. I can walk through the market making photographs of things of interest and nobody pays any attention to me.

As most of you know, photography is my thing. I've been into photography since fifth grade, so that adds up to over 50 years of making photographs. I agonize over what camera gear to bring more than any other packing decision I have to make.

In 2019, the last time we went to Paris, I brought just over nine pounds of photo gear...one DSLR and two film cameras along with four lenses. While I certainly didn't carry all that gear with me on the streets of Paris, I did have to schlep it there and back on the airplane. I'm cutting that weight in about half this time, only bringing my Nikon Z6 mirrorless digital camera and three lenses. That's right, no film cameras this time.

Since early 2019, I've been shooting film almost entirely for my personal work. I've been developing my own film at home, and as of this year, I've also been printing in my own darkroom. It's a fair question to ask why I'm not bringing film cameras to Paris this time. Well, here is my answer to that question. A large part of the enjoyment I get from shooting film is doing my own processing, scanning, and printing. I can't realistically do any of that when we're in Paris. Plus, with more cameras and formats comes more decisions. Which camera do I bring today? What film should I shoot today, black and white or color? Do I shoot digital or film today? While I enjoyed shooting film in Paris in 2019, it did come with a certain amount of handwringing. I plan to avoid that angst this time.

Case in point. When I happened upon the scene of the Notre Dame fire in 2019, the only dedicated camera I had with me was an Olympus film camera loaded with black and white film and fitted with a moderately wide angle 35mm lens. The only digital camera I had on me was my iPhone X. The images I captured that day that ended up in the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper were captured on my iPhone X. I didn't get my film back from processing for a number of days. ​I do wish I had taken my Nikon digital camera with me that day when I set out for a short walk down to the Seine before dinner. As it was, I ran out of film and my iPhone battery ran quite low, forcing me to ration my shots.

It's true that many of my favorite photographs from our 2019 trip to Paris were made on film. While I know that part of that is the unique way that film renders an image, I also know that in large measure it was due to the fact that when I was simply walking around with no special destination in mind, I took a film camera with me. Those images of everyday life in Paris are the ones that are most evocative for me. I'm hoping that those everyday scenes captured on my digital Nikon Z6 will be every bit as evocative. As readers of this blog, you will get to judge for yourselves.

One of the commonly mentioned dings against 35mm is that you can't or shouldn't attempt to make large prints with it. Well, I'm hoping to debunk that myth in this blog post. What I will provide for you is my workflow from beginning to end for getting beautiful, 13" x 19" archival inkjet black & white prints from 35mm negatives. First, a list of the gear and software I will use along the way.

Equipment/Software:

• Plustek 8200i film scanner
• Epson Stylus Pro 3880 printer
• SilverFast 8 scanning software (comes bundled with the Plustek scanner)
• Adobe Lightroom (CC or Classic)
• Adobe Photoshop

Workflow Steps:
The first step is to place the negative in the scanning tray and get it cleaned. I find it helps me to see the borders clearly by putting the tray and negative on an LED light table (these are super affordable). Once I get the negative placed and locked in, I give it a good blowing with a Rocket Blower front and back.

Next I'll walk through the settings in SilverFast. The first thing I do when I open SilverFast is conduct a Prescan. Once I have that, I make sure that the red selection box is sized properly. All of the settings are shown on the left panel. I won't go over all of those, but a couple are of special importance. First, I select 16 Bit HDR RAW for my scan type. I only use this scan type when I'm planning on making a large print. This will create a digital negative of the image. I select DNG for file type. You could probably use TIFF as well.

​This next setting is the one where I go outside accepted bounds. I set the scan resolution to the greatest allowed by the 8200i, which is 7200 ppi. Reviews will tell you that the effective resolution of this scanner is closer to half that, so the argument is that you shouldn't scan at a resolution greater than 3600 ppi because all you're getting is a bigger file with no more detail. I've tried up-sizing files scanned at 3600 ppi to the print size needed, and the results aren't nearly as good. What I found is that the shadows get super dirty, for lack of a better term. So believe me, while you are not gaining effective resolution scanning at 7200, you are getting a cleaner file to work with  downstream.

I use SilverFast's NegaFix option on all my scans. I find it does a fabulous job rendering the negatives. I don't use any of the auto color correction options. Once I've named my file and told SilverFast where to store it I hit the Scan button and let the Plustek do its thing.

Once you import the file into Lightroom (I'm using CC) you will see a digital negative on the screen. At this point I don't do anything with the image other than choose Edit in Photoshop.

When the file opens in Photoshop it will still look like a negative. At this point I use Photoshop for just two processes. First I choose Image>>Adjustments>>Invert. Now the image looks like an extremely flat positive. Don't worry about that. We'll fix that in Lightroom. The next step I do in Photoshop is to resize the image by choosing Image>>Image Size and then make the settings shown below.

To get a 13" x 19" print at 360 ppi, which is optimal for my Epson, I need to downsize the file to 6840 pixels on the long side. For the resampling choice, I use Bicubic Sharper (reduction). To be honest, I haven't tried the other options. This one just works for me. Once I execute the image size command I'm all done with Photoshop. I save the file in Photoshop and then quit Photoshop to go back to Lightroom.

Now I am back in Lightroom, and here is where we start to bring the image to life. The first thing I do is set the white and black points to taste. This alone makes a huge difference in the tonalities. Next I adjust the tone curve. I added a bit of an S-curve to this image. I also added a bit of Clarity.

Finally, I set sharpening to the Lightroom default level of 40. Other than some minor use of the healing brush, this image is ready to print. Because I'm using Lightroom CC, and because Adobe for some unknown reason didn't think printing was important enough to include in CC yet, I have to go back into Photoshop to print. Annoying, yes, but it is doable.

Now I am back in Photoshop in the Print dialog. The settings here are super critical. Besides selecting my printer, I tell Photoshop that it should manage colors and I select the proper icc printer profile. I select 16-bit data and black-point compensation. In the Layout section I choose landscape orientation. Down in the Position and Size section I input the width and let Photoshop auto calculate everything else. You'll see that the image isn't exactly 360 ppi because I did a wee bit of a crop. I'm not going to worry about that. In Rendering Intent, I've found Relative Colorimetric to be my preferred method, so I just leave it at that. I doubt that has much impact on a black and white image anyway. And then all that's left is to hit the Print button.

​I've shown the resulting print at the beginning of the blog post, so I won't repeat that here, but what I will do is include a slideshow of a series of closeup photos from the print made on my iPhone 12 Pro.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I am not a pixel peeper. When I'm making a large print, I keep in mind the typical viewing distance. To be honest, I could probably be printing at a resolution much lower than 360 ppi for such a large print as 13" x 19", but 360 ppi is what makes my Epson happiest, so that's what I stick with. Certainly looked at close up you're going to see the film grain, especially on a 400 speed classic grain film like Tri-X. But frankly, I like grain. Maybe not big chunks of it, but salt and peppery grain I'm more than happy with. And that's the way the grain looks to me on this print.

A caveat...the scanner is the critical element of this workflow. I don't think you'd get nearly as good of results with a flatbed scanner. This is where a dedicated film scanner really comes in handy. The Plustek film scanners are a terrific value and a great choice if you're looking for a dedicated 35mm film scanner.

I hope this has been helpful. As always, if you've got a question just send me a note or post a comment.

Six years ago I made one of my favorite photos in the Big Woods at Wood-Rill Scientific and Natural Area. The colors and draping of the branches caught my eye. My recollection is that it was a wettish day when I made this photo back in October of 2014.

I've been back to Wood-Rill more times than I can count since that day in early October 2014. I've often tried to find these trees to make a new image, but I'll be darned if I could find them. I traipsed all over the edge of that tamarack bog trying to find them, but I always struck out. That is until this year. Priscilla and I went out to Wood-Rill for a late afternoon hike recently and I had my Olympus OM-2n with me loaded with Ilford HP5+ black & white film, rated at an ISO of 400. As I was rooting around at the edge of the bog, all of a sudden these trees presented themselves right in front of me. I couldn't believe it. Wouldn't you know the one time when  I wasn't looking for them at all, there they'd be, right in front of me.

Because I was shooting with a 50mm lens this time rather than the 28mm lens I was using back in 2014, the perspective in these two photos is different, but they are unmistakably the same trees, with pretty much the same composition. I actually think I prefer the perspective in the black & white shot over the color shot. Losing the sky at the top tightens things up a bit in my estimation. Neither of these photos has been cropped. They are as shot. One thing I love about the black & white version is how the tamarack trees in the background seem to light up.

I think now that I've made it back to the same spot a second time, I'll be able to find it again. There are a few scenes out at Wood-Rill that I like making photographs of at different times of the year. I'll be adding these trees to my revisit list.