The café moment that changed the trip
I came to Paris thinking I was there to take photographs.
Of course I was. Paris almost dares you not to lift a camera. The buildings, the café tables, the women in beautiful coats, the balconies, the glasses of wine catching the late afternoon light — it is all there, almost too ready, almost too available.
And yet one of the first things I did when I arrived was sit in a small café in the 11th arrondissement for two hours and not take a single photograph.
The espresso machine hissed behind me. A woman at the next table read a book. Outside the window, the light moved slowly across the stone buildings, turning them from flat cream to soft gold. People passed in waves. Some rushed. Some lingered. Some paused at windows as though they had briefly forgotten where they were going.
And I just sat there.
Not producing. Not performing. Not trying to make something happen.
Just noticing.
I think that was the moment the trip began to change me.
Looking is not the same as seeing
For years, I had travelled the world thinking I was seeing it. I moved through airports, hotel rooms, layovers, cafés, streets, and wine bars with a camera in my hand and assumed that meant I was present.
But there is a difference between looking and seeing.
Looking is quick
Looking is automatic. You register a doorway, a jacket, a patch of light, and move on.
Seeing is slower
Seeing asks more of you. It requires attention, patience, and the willingness to stay with something long enough to understand why it matters.
That was what Paris gave me. Or maybe more truthfully, it was what Paris made it impossible for me to avoid.
I had arrived thinking I needed to create immediately. I thought I needed to go out into the city and start collecting images, proving to myself that I was here and making something of the trip.
But sitting in that café, tired and jet-lagged and slightly undone by the fact of being there, I felt something I had not given myself enough of before.
Permission.Permission to arrive without rushing.Permission to sit without producing.Permission to notice without photographing.Permission to be present without performing.
Slow photography is a permission slip
That is what slow photography became for me.
Not a rulebook. Not a rejection of beauty. Not a superior way of moving through the world.
A permission slip.
And I think that matters because I am not interested in telling people what kind of creator they are allowed to be.
There is room for every kind of creator
If you want to photograph your food, photograph your food. If you want to take a hundred photos of your trip, do that. If you want to be an influencer, be one. If you want to document every beautiful corner, every outfit, every breakfast, every wine glass, you should absolutely do that if it feels true to you.
This is not about saying there is a right way and a wrong way to create.
What matters is whether the way you create actually belongs to you.
The real question
Are you photographing the meal because you love the colour, the ritual, the memory of it? Or because you no longer know how to sit down and enjoy it without turning it into content?
Are you building something publicly because you have something real you want to say? Or because you are following a script you absorbed without realising it?
Paris made me confront that distinction.
Photography is really about attention
Paris also made me understand something I had been circling for years: photography is not mainly about collecting images. It is about attention.
It is about asking what is actually here. What is catching my eye. What changes if I stay a little longer. What happens if I return tomorrow, or at a different time of day, or let myself be drawn toward something quieter and more personal than the obvious shot.
What I practised in Paris
I returned to places. I sat before I shot. I noticed the same street in different light. I paid attention to doorways, reflections, hands, signage, folds of coats, and the backs of people moving through a frame.
And slowly, the work changed.
More importantly, I changed.
Because when you stop trying to collect a city, you begin to experience it.
What Paris changed in me
Paris changed the way I photograph.
But more than that, it changed the questions I ask.
It made me ask whether I was creating from attention or from pressure. Whether I was making images because I loved them or because I felt I should. Whether I was building a body of work or just accumulating evidence that I had been somewhere.
From those questions came the blog posts, and eventually the beginnings of an idea for a course around slow photography.
But I am not starting with the course.
I am starting here.
With the stories. With the noticing. With the shift itself.
The question I keep returning to
If there is one question I keep returning to, it is this:
Is the way I am creating actually mine?
Because slowness, at its best, is not about denial.
It is about choice.
It is about creating with intention, paying attention on purpose, and letting your eye become your own.
Sometimes it starts very simply
With a café.
With a window.
With light moving across a building.
With the decision not to take the photograph straight away.
Just long enough to really arrive.