Slightly Nutty Street Photography

      Even if Grenoble has banned publicity, big advertising pictures are still omnipresent all over the city. Especially on shop windows from where they can easily make you feel uncool. The young model in sunglasses was upsetting me this way when an old man walked slowly towards us with a stick.Wearing the same kind of sunglasses, he was already staring wisely at his younger self. I just had time to rush between parked cars and to shoot them both.

     Waiting for the end of my daughter's training in the tiny gymnasium near Grenoble's museum of art, I could witness the arrival of hyperactive boys craving to play and score a basket. It was like a storm rushing on the field. They were all shooting at the same time on the same basket, and the storm of their falling balls was raging. Then I tried to capture as many blurry balls as I could.

       There were lots of dogs, everywhere in the huge hall des expositions of Bourg-en-Bresse. And lots of masters too. Always very close, in all senses of the word, to each other. It was a very competitive dog show and you could feel both human and canine tension in the air. When I saw this woman waiting for her dog's turn to compete, I noticed that both of them were similarly stressed as if at a parent-teacher meeting and took their picture.

    The old man was feeding pigeons in Grenoble's Jardin des Plantes . While leaving the park towards the main entrance, he turned back and called with a slight whistling. Instead of a dog, it was a pigeon that suddenly came closer to him and landed on his hand. I was a bit too far from the scene but managed to shoot just before the bird flew away.

    This couple was wandering in the alleys of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. It was a hot summer, and the man was clearly striving against urban heat. They came closer to the outdoor photography exposition about landscapes. As they crossed the sand dunes of Sahara, it seemed to me that they just had found their adequate scenery.

       I have always found shopping so boring. This thought was clearly shared by the little dog as its owner looked at clothes. Unlike her puppy, the lady was taking her time and enjoying this moment of happy consumption. I found the difference in their behaviours all the more amusing as it was consistent with their hair cuts and discreetly snapped this picture.

    This scene took place in a little street of Florence. Although in the heart of a hot summer, I was surprised that these old italian ladies and gentlemen were quite warmly dressed. They were talking a lot, but all remained strikingly motionless. Which did not prevent them to travel far away in their memories, as the postal slogan on the window revealed it.

     This kid was helping his grandfather during an agricultural show, with several threshing machines in demonstration. I really noticed them when they start climbing one machine, the young boy following his grandpa on the ladder. The small cloud has been brought out nicely thanks to a red filter which I was trying by curiosity (and never used again thereafter).