Is Paris Photogenic?

In Persian and Arabic literature, there is a term called “Shahl o Momtane” which simply means something that seems so easy to do but in fact, it’s not.

The first time I visited Paris, which was six years ago, I literally didn’t have the slightest idea how to put a film inside a camera, let alone taking pictures. So All I got from there was a huge visual library inside my brain of all those beautiful monuments and streets. I think there is no need to explain how I was dying to get to Paris and indulge myself and my cute little Leica. In fact, taking good pictures of Paris is somehow like taking beautiful shots from Natalie Portman. How hard could it be?! Well, it turned out to be hard enough! I may say, significantly harder than taking photos of aesthetically-challenged Toronto! ( I still believe it’s a cool city but you have to admit it’s not beautiful per say!). but why it’s so hard?

First of all, the charm of Paris is so overwhelming that like a hearty roasted pork in Munich’s October fest, it’s as hard to digest as it’s delicious. There is a good chance that for the first couple of days, you find yourself, just wandering around, wondering where you should point the camera to. Even after that, the tougher decision would be how to frame the picture. Everything is so delightfully pretty and so strongly connected that it looks like a crime to exclude any bit of it from the rest.

Even when you find your frame, there’s a huge technical problem and it’s distortion. Most of the dreamy streets in Paris are so narrow that they hardly allow you to step back far enough to be able to avoid distortions, caused by shooting with a wide angle lens from the bottom of a tall building from very close distance and unless you’re using a quite pricy shift lens, you should find a way to incorporate that so called problem into your style some how.

Another problem is, as a tourist, you don’t have the luxury to be always at the right place at the right moment like a photographer who actually lives in Paris. Not only you’re going to visit Pairs in a short period of the year, and mostly in the summer, your time also is going to be limited and whether you like it or not, you’ll find yourself in front of a magnificent scene, where the sun is in the middle of the sky and you’re going to have some strong, unflattering shadows combined with some unpleasant colors and if you really want to depict the details in the buildings and your camera can not be equipped with a polarizing filter, well, you should start singing “good bye blue sky” in front of that wall!

And in the summer, they are tourists everywhere and no matter how hard you try, it’s almost impossible not to have them in the frame, and unlike super cute super elegant Parisian girls, most of the tourists are not so pleasing to the eyes to be included in the compositions.

And the last but not the least, every corner of this city has been excavated by many photographers including giants like Bresson and Doisneau and it’s almost a mission impossible to make anything unique or original.

Ok…I think I’ve made enough excuses to justify why my pictures aren’t so great…

Oh God…when I was leaving for holidays, two weeks ago, Israel was still fighting with Palestinians in Gaza. All of a sudden, there’re bombarding Beirut?! I got a Figaro at the Airport and for seconds, I had the impression of time traveling or something! I actually did check the date on the paper…it was not 1982, it was July 16th 2006.
I can’t leave you unsupervised for two weeks?