![](https://photographybyira.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Scan_20240114_027-scaled.jpg)
In January of 2013 I spent eight days in Paris. I wandered the streets of Paris and did my best to conjure up the spirit of Henri Cartier-Bresson and the French Humanist photographers that inspire me.
Unfortunately I had short notice of the opportunity to go and I did not have enough B&W film to take with me so I settled for borrowing a point and shoot digital camera from my mother.
I enjoyed my time photographing in Paris immensely. I particularly have fond memories of wandering around Basilique du Sacré-Cœur and the artist market in Montmartre. I also loved visiting the vendors along the Seine river.
It was only after I returned that I discovered to my horror that I had not recorded the images in high resolution. All of my images were extremely small jpeg files!
I had some medium format negatives I made at Notre Dame cathedral but when it came to everyday street scenes I found myself favoring the small point and shoot camera that let me work quickly. Some of my best images were actually taken on an iPhone.
While I did make a few darkroom prints of gargoyles and aerial views of the city from the Cathedral, My best images by far were the street photographs I had made digitally. Unfortunately they all had a distinctive pixel quality to them that I felt just didn’t do the essence of Paris justice… until now.
![](https://photographybyira.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Scan_20240114_024.jpg)
During winter break I was doing a lot of preparation for my upcoming classes. For my advanced digital photography course I was reviewing computer hardware specs and putting together a lecture about optimum image quality on a screen. As I looked at the 5K retina monitors with a 1100:1 contrast range I thought about how these monitors actually held more resolving power than 35mm film. When I logged into an iMac with a retina display I realized that we were not using the highest resolution possible. The image quality of the 5k monitor was sensational and the brightness range was equivalent to a 10 stop exposure range. Knowing that photographic paper can only hold 7 stops of information I had an idea that I might find some satisfaction in photographing my Paris street photographs on ISO 3200 film.
![](https://photographybyira.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Scan_20240114_026-EDIT.jpg)
My hypothesis was that the grain structure of the film would mask the pixel structure of the digital image that I found so displeasing. Like a faded memory I was attempting to translate the digital images into a historical film image and remove unnecessary details that seemed to kill the joie de vivre.
One of the unexpected benefits of this process is that I got to re-explore the scene with my 35mm camera. I could recompose each image in the camera and fill the frame with as much or as little of the original image as I wanted to. I photographed these screen images using my Nikon F100 with a 105 micro lens. I used Ilford 3200 ISO film.
This is but my first test roll of film but so far I am optimistic that I will finally have a photographic record that aligns with my memories of my time there. There is something of a less is more quality that I find pleasing as I review the early results on my contact sheet that I made in the darkroom today.
I think film translates the essence of a place so effectively that it is worth revisiting the original image capture with my closeup lens on film. I have a lot to learn yet, and I will make some subtle changes to the next experiment but I see that the ideas I am developing are building momentum. I don’t think I would have tried this if I had not also recently made prints from ISO 3200 Tmax Film of the Buddha statue. There was something about that image that resonated deeply with me and I am feeling a similar resonance with these Paris images.
I look forward to seeing where this project takes me.
![Ira's signature logo](https://photographybyira.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/LogoSignatureNEWwhite.jpg)