Photographing Paris: A Core Memory, On Film

Three years ago, I photographed two pre-wedding portrait sessions in Paris.
The Ritz. The Louvre. Pont Alexandre III.

Even typing those names still feels surreal.

I remember standing in the early morning light, camera in hand, feeling like I was holding two realities at once:
I was living inside a core memory… and I was there to do a job.

There’s a strange tension in that.
The desire to fully be somewhere…to feel the air, the architecture, the hum of the city…while also carrying the quiet responsibility of creating something beautiful and lasting for someone else.

It felt cinematic. Almost unreal.

When I was in elementary, I watched the Olsen twins in their Paris movie and imagined what that city must feel like. The fashion, the romance, the bridges at sunset. Paris felt like a dream reserved for grown-up versions of myself; a future self I wasn’t yet sure I’d become.

And then suddenly, I was there.
Not just as a tourist. Not just as a dreamer.
But as a photographer.

An artist.
Working.

There is something deeply grounding about doing what you love in a place you once only saw through a screen. It collapses time. The younger version of me and the present version of me felt very close in those moments.

Why I Chose Film

For those sessions, I made it intentional to shoot both digital and film, but I prioritized film just as much.

Film has taught me to slow down.

Every frame costs something.
Each click is literal money.

Film demands intention.

It asks: Are you sure?
It asks: Did you really see that moment?

It forces me to trust my eye. To compose carefully. To wait. To feel.

What’s funny, and maybe even more poetic, is that I didn’t get around to developing the film until recently. Life happened. Work happened. Time passed.

And then one day, years later, I finally saw those images come to life.

It felt like stepping back into Paris all over again.

The light at the Louvre.
The quiet grandeur of the Ritz.
The golden glow stretching across Pont Alexandre III.

I experienced those memories once in real time…
and then again, newly, through the softness and depth only film can give.

There is something sacred about that delay. Film doesn’t rush you. It lets the memory age before revealing it back to you.

How Film Has Shaped My Digital Work

There is nothing quite like photographing on film.

And even when I’m shooting digital now, I carry that same discipline with me.

I don’t rely on rapid-fire bursts hoping one frame will be “the one.”
I move with intention.
I look longer.
I wait.

Film changed the way I see in both my professional work as well as in my personal everyday.

It taught me that photography isn’t about volume, it’s about presence. It’s about the art of noticing. It’s about honoring the moment as it unfolds instead of trying to overpower it.

Every time I get behind a lens, I feel like I’m photographing a movie.

But Paris felt like stepping inside one.

And the most beautiful part?
Three years later, I can still see it clearly.

That younger girl who once watched a Paris movie and dreamed?
She would not believe where we’ve stood.