Bonjour mes amies! I’m not sure when my love affair with photography started. I’m pretty sure I was always that kid in high school that took too many photos, and just never stopped. I am not a great photographer to be sure (yet?), but it wasn’t until my semester in Paris that I really started to learn the basics of photography. (I will continue to romanticize that semester for the rest of my life.)

While there I took a photography atelier with a photographer named Philippe Vermès. It was the greatest class ever! Every Thursday we would meet Monsieur Vermès in some seemingly random place in Paris at 9am. A cafe in the dix-huitième arrondisement, or an graffitied alleyway in the seizième (seriously, that happened), or outside the Moulin Rouge. It was the best because not a lot of people were hustling and bustling about yet (by “people” I mean “tourists”), and he would take us to his favorite places in Paris, including the bakery he thinks has the greatest tarts. And they were pretty awesome.

It was our assignment each week to take a roll of film and spend 4-5 hours developing a couple of prints from it. Yup, it took me that long to do just a couple of prints – so different from digital photography! Anyways, I ended up with three series of four prints that I really like, and today I’m sharing with you the first one – and perhaps my favorite. Oh! And apologies that these are not the best quality images – they are photos of photos because well, I don’t have a scanner.

I hope you enjoy!

And today’s French word of the day is trompe l’oeil, or “trick of the eye”. It’s one of my favorite french phrases! (Click on the link for some great examples)