Fontaine, and B&W nostalgia
February 16th, 2008I learnt photography with a high-school pal, and as we had to develop the film ourselves in his cellar, we only shot with B&W film. Now that I have access to millions of pixels and millions of colors, I miss the touch of our ISO 50 Ilford film coils in the dark, wet with toxic chemicals, and generally messed up beyond restauration.
PS: do not imagine that St Paul de Vence is a quiet place where one can find peace near a soothing fountain. I had to wait for nearly fifteen minutes until I had a clean shot with no hordes of tourists in my field of view. But you can still hear them around my back.
Wonderful shot! Glad you managed to get it without the tourists.
Another solution to get rid of tourists when one has a tripod and the scene is dark enough (e.g. inside a church) is to set a really really long exposure time (like 20s) and hope that nobody in the field of view will remain static over this period of time. People dissolve into thin air, leaving only the faintest wisps of smoky presence, like the hazy outlines of busy ghosts.
See this and this, among many others found on flickr with the keyword ‘ghosts’.
So cool! If I stare at both of these for a bit, I imagine some stories will materialize.