She was standing, barefoot, in the Tuileries in a twirly, tea-length skirt. The sun was setting, and true to Paris, it was dreamy. I love good, flowing skirt, but what stopped my scroll was the camera in her hands. A funny-looking fellow, two lenses, held gently in her hands as she peered down into the focusing screen.

Zooming in on the photograph, I could just make out the word, Rolleicord. Immediately, I googled. Film, yikes! But after some obsessive searching the summer after my first year of uni, I found one for $160 from a nice lady in Chicago. Cecil (named for my favorite British portrait photographer, Cecil Beaton) was mine, and my first foray into film (which I now shoot pretty much exclusively).

Many rolls of black and white later, I finally took up the courage to shoot color and decided to give Cecil a whirl. Turns out he had mushrooms, and this is the first roll I shot after having him cleaned (I sadly went through many rolls of film before the cleaning happened). It was a test roll for my She’s in Bloom project, but the results did not come in time for me to know whether all was good. I was brash and used him anyways, and glad I did.

These photographs are from a walk starting at Poissonière in the 9th down to the Seine. Stopping only for delights and to look up, because I forget to do that often.