Travel. Write. Drink Coffee. Repeat

Brass Effects

Friends and followers know that Paris is my ‘wish I lived there’ city. I visit as often as I can. Each time, I get obsessed by the weighty brass doorknobs and knockers gracing the doors to apartment buildings and offices. They are truly works of art.

Polished to within a centimetre of their probably everlasting lives, they are the pride and joy of ‘guardiens and guardiennes’, the fiercely proud live-in managers of the Haussmann buildings.

Traveling companions mostly walk away while I position myself to snap the shiny brass beasts. Crouching, stooping, angling to get just the right shot. Often, a duster flapping ‘guardienne’, has opened the door from inside just as I click, causing me to lose balance and back into oncoming pedestrians. ‘Merde, un photographe fou!’

But it’s worth every embarrassment to capture these beauties in brass.