A weekend in Paris...

This weekend, my wife and I decided to take advantage of a little lull in my schedule by taking a much needed break away from things. We booked a short trip to Paris very much at the last minute so we didn't really have time to get to excited beforehand. This, coupled with me never having had any real desire to visit Paris meant that I had little in the way of expectations other than grabbing a couple of days away from work. Now we are back what can I say about Paris? Probably nothing that hasn't been said before but we absolutely fell in love with the city. I haven't felt such 'sadness' (for want of a better word) on leaving a city for a long long time, as I did this morning. Not only is the city utterly beautiful, but it is so vibrant and full of life. We just spent time walking and walking and walking and it was wonderful. For a photographer, it is simply a dream city to work in.

From a technical point of view I used the trip to test out Fuji's firmware 4.0 for the x-T1 cameras that I now use. For photographers out there, for me it is a huge leap forward. I only took 2 lenses with me, and stuck with 35mm 1.4 for the majority of the time and it is now a very fast focusing lens. Intensely backlit scenes didn't phase the camera… indeed, the few out of focus images I did get were purely my fault and nothing to do with the camera. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the new firmware performs during a wedding.

However, all of that techno nonsense shouldn't get in the way of the real purpose of the trip which was to spend time relaxing with my wife. It was a really wonderful 4 days in a city that I had never really wished to visit in the past, but now want to return to tomorrow.

Here are a few images I took whilst strolling around….

This lady was absolutely crazy… cycling around the Arc De Triomphe during rush hour (the picture doesn't do this justice…. 30 seconds either side of this image and traffic was madness). However, as with everything in Paris it seems, she manoeuvred through the madness with great style and elegance…….

 All images © John Colson. Not for reproduction.