Okay, so everyone throws around this “arty Paris” idea, right? Like it’s some kind of secret sauce you find on the streets there. You go, you click, and boom – instant masterpiece. Well, let me walk you through my own little adventure trying to chase that ghost.
First off, I had this grand vision. I wasn’t gonna be one of those tourists just snapping the Eiffel Tower from twenty different, but basically identical, angles. Nope. I was on a mission to capture the real artsy vibe. The soul of the city, you know? Thought I was pretty smart, planning it all out.
So, the practical part. Step one: get a camera that didn’t scream “I have no idea what I’m doing.” Not top-of-the-line, just something decent. I actually spent a few evenings before the trip just messing with the dials and buttons. You know how it is, trying to figure out aperture from shutter speed without your brain exploding. Watched a ton of those “Paris street photography” videos online. Most of ’em? Utter garbage, to be honest. Full of fluff.
Then I landed in Paris. Day one, super hyped. Made a beeline for Montmartre – ’cause, you know, artists, history, all that jazz. And man, the crowds! Seriously. Trying to get a single shot without a sea of selfie sticks and tour groups photobombing you? Near impossible. It felt like I was wrestling an octopus just to frame a decent shot of an old doorway. My ‘arty’ dreams were already taking a beating.
I walked for what felt like a hundred miles. My feet were screaming. I’d spot something, think, “This is it! This is arty!”, pull out the camera, faff around, and the picture would just look… meh. Flat. Like something you’d skip past in a holiday album. It was frustrating, let me tell you. I started thinking this whole “arty Paris” thing was just a myth, something people say.
One afternoon, I was pretty fed up. Just sitting by the Seine, watching the boats, ready to just give up on the whole photography quest. And then I saw this old fella, tucked away in a corner, just sketching. Nothing fancy, just him and his little pad. The way the light caught his face, his complete focus – it wasn’t “grand” art, but it felt incredibly real. Simple, quiet, but powerful.
That was a bit of a lightbulb moment, I guess. I sort of ditched the idea of hunting for some epic, predefined “arty” scene. Instead, I just started… looking. Really looking. At the small stuff. The way rain looked on cobblestones, a weirdly shaped shadow, a bright red umbrella against a grey building. Stuff I’d completely ignored before in my quest for the ‘big shot’.
So, my whole process kind of flipped. I stopped chasing and started noticing. Sometimes I wouldn’t even take a picture. I’d just stand there and soak it in. And when I did use the camera, it wasn’t about forcing an “arty” composition. It was more about trying to grab a little piece of what I was seeing or feeling in that moment. It became a much quieter, more personal thing.
What did I end up with? No award-winners, that’s for sure. Some photos are decent, some are still pretty rubbish. But “arty Paris,” for me, stopped being about the photos themselves. It became about that whole experience, that shift in how I saw things. It wasn’t about technique or gear, or even finding the ‘perfect’ Parisian backdrop. It was about slowing down, paying attention. That was the real practice, the real record.
And honestly? Those quiet little observations, those tiny details? They felt more genuinely “arty” than any of the grand, famous stuff I’d been trying to force earlier. So yeah, “arty Paris.” It’s probably not what you’re imagining. Or at least, it wasn’t for me. It’s more about the journey of seeing, I reckon, than the actual stuff you bring back.
