Paris and I ~ 'Shooting The Breeze'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Shooting The Breeze ~

Shooting The Breeze, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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If there's one thing you can't blame the French for it's hiding their light under a bushel. If they think they are the best they will tell you so. They will also tell you when they think something is crap or someone is wrong too. This is fine.

But i've always smiled when i've come across someone who is known, officially, as in job title, as an 'expert something-or-other'. Seems a bit rich if you ask me.

Well OK, no doubt they've studied for half their sad, booky little lives to get there, but it's just the in-yer-face arrogance of the expression. 'I'm an expert, me, how about you?'

And it's not even meant that way; it just means you've earned a certain qualification i believe. But i have this in-built aversion to people who think they know things (especially more than me) and have chosen a profession where they are officially permitted to rub that fact in every time they tell you what they do. Admittedly, your average 'Expert Contable' or ingénieur or whatever is a perfectly normal, unassuming person. There's just something that makes me wanna say, 'OK then mister expert... if you're so expert why did you completely screw up my company's accounts and my girlfriend had to show you where the problem was?

Oh well, if you do happen to be kicking around French intelligencia from time to time you'll probably find yourself up against quite a lot of egg spurts of one sort or another, so probably best to keep your head down, nod sagely, and hey, why not make up a job title with 'expert' in it of your own. I mean, if you don't tell 'em, how are they gonna know, right? ~ Sab Will, Expert Fabulateur, B.Sh (Hons)

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© 2010 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Paris and I ~ 'Draw Me A Sleep'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Draw Me A Sleep ~

Draw Me A Sleep, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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A fierce foreign sun beats down upon this shadowless child, this misplaced schoolboy sans domus, sans patria, stuck, literally, on a Paris street in the 14th.

A group of his similarly, strangely displaced classmates are scattered in clusters along the wall of rue d'Alésia, as seemingly oblivious passers-by scuttle past, huddled under the gathering gloom of a late autumn day; it's only my brightening up of these pictures artificially that give the impression of a bright, cheerful, sunny day.

And yet these paper-thin children don't seem distressed or despondent, despite the fact that they re from a country where most of the schools were destroyed in a massive earthquake and are still waiting to be rebuilt. Contemplative or unconcerned, if not quite insouciant, would be a better description, and occasionally a bit of childish cheekiness peeks out.

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© 2010 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Paris and I ~ 'Take Me Back 'Ome'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Take Me Back 'Ome ~

Take Me Back 'Ome, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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Here I am in London as I read about the worst snow in however many years hitting the French capital. All those cute pictures of the Eiffel Tower I could be taking; all those snow-covered statues and slushy Parisian sidewalks waiting to be snapped.

Oh well, this is the best I can do, seeing as the photos on this blog MUST be taken exclusively using my iPhone. The above picture was taken exclusively using my iPhone. And yet, through the miracles of modern electronics I offer you a chilly blue Parisian snow scene, a festive London bus, a city name drop, a Scots-inspired Paris icon and an inordanate amount of red for your eyetime. Oh, not forgetting a shadowy reflection of your diligent city snapper into the bargain. If I'd moved slightly to the right you'd have had my dad munching on his midday toast but I've spared us all that unnecessary intrusion.

By the way, reflective as I am.. ;-) , I've been wondering what I could do over the next twelve months with the aim of publishing a 365 page book in a year's time. It'll be 'My Paris Book', and it'll be based on my photos and vignettes, just like this one, but I'm thinking maybe it should be a bit more focused somehow. Like having a coherent theme, for example.

You know what, if you have any ideas for this project which could pull it together and give more of an official and eventually marketable slant to it i'd love to hear them. You'll be able to track my daily progress throughout next year, won't that be exciting? and be namechecked at the end of it all. What do you think? Something a bit different; a bit challenging; something that will capture the public's imagination; something a publisher might want to publish; something funny; something original; something me.

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© 2010 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Paris and I ~ 'Back To The River'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Back To The River ~

Back To The River, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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Am i allowed to be reminded of my own poems? i suppose that's ok isn't it?

Oh, well i've discovered two. One's about a river, but i won't put that here coz it's a bit gloomy. But then there's another one which literally was about this place in Paris, this place in the photo, as you'll find out below (click the title for more info).

I lived on a barge on the Seine for a year once, out in a sleepy backwater in a place called Port Marly, which is near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and had to commute into Paris every day on the RER line A. I sometimes think back to that time now... it was a time of incertitude and change...

Walk

Hazy Sunday, friendly funday

Lazy chats and who needs Monday?

A favourite place, a cheerful face

A glowing sun and a carefree pace

Lock that heaves 'midst Autumn leaves

We heal the world in woolly sleeves

With hands thrust deep we walk and weep

And talk of things we two shall keep

No need to touch, our words say much

A love for life and friends and such

The breeze it licks while distant ticks

A timepiece as at life it picks

Memories call, reflections fall

Beneath the surface feelings sprawl

We laugh and smile, we gently rile

Our heads we turn and pause awhile

Now chills set in, goosepimply skin

The café nears, we glance and grin

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© 2010 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Paris and I ~ 'Loneliness of the Long-Distance Commuter'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Loneliness of the Long-Distance Commuter ~

Loneliness of the Long-Distance Commuter, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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Didn't there used to be a famous book on zen boudhism called the loneliness of the long-distance runner, or am I getting confused with motorcycle maintenence..?

Oh well, this really brings to mind an image of some little boy from the forties or something, all done up in his school uniform with nicely pressed shorts, clutching hard to the strap of his satchel with his bottom lip quivering and tears welling up in his eyes but trying to be a 'big boy' as he heads off to boarding school for the first time.

Maybe it's the sign, 'Grand Voyager', that makes me thing of you're a 'big boy now'. Or maybe the seeming solitude amongst this multitude of other lives buzzing back and forth like some sort of Brownian motion experiment from the school science lab.

I was reading a book of philosophical puzzles the other day, and one of them was, why do we get excited or sad or scared or just simply emotional when we watch films or read books? We know it's not real. And this guy is probably some highly competent, high-flying businessman ready to be whisked off to some vital business meeting to clinch a deal with the Japanese after months of intense negotiation.

But he still looks like a little boy lost to me. So why do we?

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© 2010 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Paris and I ~ 'What Are You Stairing At?'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ What Are You Stairing At? ~

What Are You Stairing At?, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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It's well worth looking up, or indeed down, as you wander around Paris. Actually, before i took this shot i was looking up, which was nice, and i then wondered what it would be like looking down, and it was even nicer, et voilà the result.

This shot looks like it's in someone's private hallway, and I think it is, but only semi-private, because if you're part of the Galerie Vivienne and the door to you stairwell is permanently open there must be a reason, right? For stupid photographers like me to come in and start snapping away like they haven't seen a bunch of stairs before.

They must be pretty used to it though, because not one of the actual residents who came in or out, or were they clients, actually stopped or looked disapprovingly or asked me what I was doing or said "It's a staircase - a stoopid staircase - why are you taking pictures of a stoopid staircase?"

Maybe photographing stupid staircases is back in fashion with a vengeance.

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© 2010 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Paris and I ~ 'Moscow in the Metro'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Moscow in the Metro ~

Moscow in the Metro, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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Well, it looks like the end of Western civilisation as we know it is nigh. After the Russians have taken over the World Cup, put their spies in the British Parliament, and have been revealed by Wikileaks to be just as corrupt as the mafia they are allegedly indistinguishable from, we now find they're after our metro stations too.

This used to be the terminus of the new line 14 at St.Lazare, but it hasn't taken the Ruskies long to get their hands on it. The 'Metro de Moscou', I ask you!

What next? The Panthéon de St.Petersbourg? The Galeries Leningrad? The Louvre de Vladivostok? Where will this lunacy lead next?

Just kidding, it's actually a very attractive mural in the aforementioned station depicting some well-known Moscow landmarks. And not a mafia maverick in sight. Although... did i see something move through that sinister black square just now..?

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© 2010 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.