I know you’ve probably been waiting to see the photos I took in Vietnam during our recent trip, but I thought it would be a good idea to start 2025 with a few photos of the streets of Saint-Denis, where most of my work is done. It’s not even a week since we landed after a journey of almost 24 hours through the airports of ConDao, Saigon and Bangkok. I’ll come back later on to this trip, which went beyond my expectations. Not only in terms of the places we visited, but also photographically speaking.

We didn’t have time to relax on the way back. The kids went back to school and Gwen and I worked all week. So the weekend was a good opportunity to recuperate a bit. I don’t know about you, but when we travel, we’re often very active and we always come back from holiday very tired. We rarely just hang around the hotel doing nothing. I mean, the kids would love it if they could binge-watch their social networks, but we had to kick their butts to get out and visit. When I think of the thousands of euros spent to get to Vietnam, I think it’s a bit stupid to stay locked up in your room scrolling through TikTok or Instagram…

This week, even though I had very little time to spend on the streets, I still wanted to take some photos. As you’d expect, the contrast between the bustling, crowded streets of Vietnam and the almost deserted streets of Saint-Denis was quite impressive. But that’s the way it is. Saint-Denis is where I live, you just have to deal with it. Hanging around the streets this week, I didn’t say to myself that it was better elsewhere. I just thought it was different. Okay, there are fewer people. But does that mean there’s nothing to photograph? Very often our view of the city is skewed. We have the impression that we know everything about the city and nothing surprises us any more. I think that’s where the problem lies that some photographers have when they say they can’t take photos at home. This need to travel, to go elsewhere in search of exoticism. The thing responsible for all this is the brain.

What you have to do is look at the city as if you were discovering it for the first time, being curious, looking up and letting yourself be taken where you wouldn’t normally go. This is the case for me. I always hang out in the same places. You have to get off the beaten track. That’s what I did today when I had 2 hours to kill in Saint-Denis while waiting for Ronan to finish his basketball training. I had no expectations this morning when I went to take photos. I’d just decided to walk around a bit and snap if the opportunity arose and frankly, when I got home I was quite surprised by the results! As it was early in the morning I did a bit of light/shadows trying to make it interesting and I came across this little nugget at the opening of the Blog!

I’m trying to write soon a little Blog about Vietnam.

All photos were taken with the Ricoh GR3 | Crop 35 mm.