Legless in Paris

Paris, France. 11-14 April 2016

Ditching his tripod, kit bag and preconceptions, David Noton headed to the capital of love to try out a whole new way of shooting

It felt distinctly odd to be boarding the train to Paris without a tripod. We all know a good tripod to be one of the most fundamentally important items in a photographer’s arsenal, but this time – on, I think, my twentieth visit to the City of Light – I was travelling light, indecently light. I felt vaguely guilty at St Pancras shouldering a tiny photo-rucksack containing just a couple of lenses and the camera. Call myself a proper photographer? But the camera in question was the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, a camera designed for fast action and low light, hence no legs.

The whole point of the trip was to experiment with a handheld, impromptu, spontaneous approach to my photography, utilizing the camera’s strengths to capture people going about their daily business in Paris’s iconic locations. I used just two fast prime lenses: the EF 35mm f/1.4 L II USM and the EF 85mm f/1.2 L II USM. Working light, unencumbered by a big bag and tripod, turned out to be a refreshing, liberating change, enabling me to produce a more reportage-like set of images; it was, quite frankly, just fun.

The people in my pictures are on the whole innocuous, unremarkable passers-by; Parisiens and tourists, doing what we all do, rushing about engrossed by our phones. However, the image of a couple kissing on the Pont des Arts is influenced by the late, great Robert Doisneau, one of my favourite and most inspirational of photographers; I love the wry humour of his eye.

Doisneau is renowned for his 1950 image Le baiser de l’hôtel de Ville (Kiss by the Town Hall). This is my homage to him. I didn’t set out to make this shot, I was just lingering on the Pont des Arts, experimenting with shooting slowexposure panning shots of people passing by. This couple was captured fleetingly and spontaneously, gone before I could really register the opportunity. I like the feel of it; Paris remains a hopelessly romantic city, and the backdrop of the river and Palais du Louvre is so typically Parisien. The contrast in the scene was high but I managed to recover all the detail in the bright sky in Lightroom. Generally speaking I leant heavily on the 1D X Mark II’S enhanced shadow detail retention, especially at night. The wider dynamic range, a useful characteristic the 1D X Mark II shares with the new 5D Mk IV, meant that not once did I need a filter.

For decades I’ve shot cities at night with meticulous attention to exploiting the best viewpoints illuminated perfectly as darkness falls, all captured by cameras on tripods with shutters open for anything up to 30 seconds. Such long exposures render the city’s inhabitants and visitors either as indistinct blurs, or invisible. My cities have, as a result, tended to look deserted, sterile even. But cities are all about the people who live and work in them, not to mention the legions of tourists who visit them, so I’ve had cause of late to reappraise my approach. This set is the result.

The evening before departure I prepared for my imminent trip by browsing; Lartigue, Doisneau, Brassaï and Cartier-bresson all helped to get me in the mood. But I do wonder if part of the appeal of their work now is because it so powerfully evokes a time gone by. Could it be that in 50 years’ time, my pictures from this jaunt will similarly evoke long-faded memories of how we lived in the 2010s? I’d certainly like to think so. Next month switzerland