Karin start­ed her project months ago cause she did­n’t have enough of a cre­ative out­let in her pro­fes­sion­al life. It’s great to work with some­one who’s giv­en up so much already in the ear­ly stages to see it come to fruition. I tend to invest so much of myself in work like this, so it’s always appre­ci­at­ed to have a client who’s so pas­sion­ate about their ideas too.

Karin gives me lit­tle hints about what to film and how to edit, but trusts me enough as an artist to give me final cut, and also under­stands that as a cam­era­man and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, I need to be well rest­ed to work at my best, so she nev­er sched­ules any shoot­ing before 10:00am. It’s a dream to work with peo­ple like her.

I Love You: The Wall, an artists piece in a park, with the phrase writ­ten in over 250 lan­guages on tiles that span over 40 square metres.

Continue read­ing “France, Day 5: Paris”…

My favourite things to cap­ture when trav­el­ing are the lit­tle details that belie the true life of a local. One may get a gen­er­al sense of a city from the weath­er and archi­tec­ture and lan­guage, but to trav­el and eat and shop like they do here is the most enrich­ing expe­ri­ence.

I’m so lucky to be here.

 

Continue read­ing “France, Day 4: Paris”…

The hotel man­ag­er is some­thing of a bum­bling old man who bare­ly speaks a lick of English and wears a check­ered sweater and cap even though it’s boil­ing out­side. When I asked him for his name, he said, “Monsieur ________”. “And you”, he said, “are Mr. Laenin”?, as the room was booked under Karin’s name. I laughed and shook my head. “Better you with a girl than a boy with a boy”, he said, touch­ing the tips of his index fin­gers to rep­re­sent some non­de­script rela­tion he did­n’t approve of. Even though it was a com­plete­ly homo­pho­bic com­ment, his Parisian charm almost let him get away with it. Almost.

Every time I see him now, he asks me if she slept over last night. I think he assumes I came to Paris for some kind of booty call.

 

Continue read­ing “France, Day 3: Paris”…

It has­n’t quite clicked in that I’m here yet. I was occu­pied with so much back home that this trip for­ev­er felt like it was far away, even when I was fly­ing out the next day. It’s Ascension Day in France — a coun­try made up most­ly of Roman Catholics — so every­one has the day off and most shops are closed.

9:30pm and it’s still bright out.

During the day it’s close to 30°C, and the heat makes cer­tain smells come out in Montmatre, rem­i­nis­cent of Chinese mar­ket­places (though nowhere near as pun­gent). The tem­per­a­ture drops to a brisk tem­per­a­ture in the evening though, and one needs to car­ry a coat or sweater when trav­el­ing at night.

Continue read­ing “France, Day 2: Paris”…