Parisian inspiration by Carla Coulson

My family is a particularly close one. When we’re all together for Christmas, no one can go quiet for five minutes without being asked “are you in a mood?” There’s none stop talking and everyone knows everyone else’s secrets. Really, it’s kind of scary. So with my baby brother in Paris, there comes a time when Skype, even video Skype, or Facetime just won’t do the trick. I need to go and see him to ask him in person, every five minutes: “are you in a mood…?” And so off to Paris it is!

To get into the spirit, I’ve done a whole lot of ‘Paris-y’ things: read The Paris Wife, rented the Midnight in Paris DVD, dusted off and re-read the old copy of Peter Mayle’s trilogy about life in Provence. And - I paged through my collection of coffee table books, noticing that I seem to have a soft spot for those photographic books by someone who bought some house somewhere in France.

That includes a story about an extraordinary photographer who lives in Paris. I first fell in love with Carla Coulson and her beautiful photography when I read her book, Italian Joy. She is an Australian woman that gave up her successful corporate job to move to Florence to study Italian. After a while she enrolled in a photography school, met the obligatory Italian boy along the way and a new career and a new life was born. She moved to Paris and wrote the book, Paris Tango. I love the book because her writing is fabulous, giving us more than the photos that are already so beautiful that the images would have been enough anyway. She brings to life the Moulin Rouge backstage, artists' ateliers, haute couture shows and the private lives of Parisians.

She is also the photographer responsible for two other books on my bookshelf, so as you can see, I am a huge fan! Her daily blog is filled with beautiful images that she created or with all things photography than interests her. Well worth the read.

You can visit her website here or like her Facebook page.

Image credit: Photo taken by me