In earlier days, some forty years ago, I’d pack a small knapsack. At the bottom was a camera bag stuffed with some fifty rolls of black and white film and two small cameras. At the top of the little nylon sack, like an afterthought, were an embarrassingly small number of clothes to last for a three-month trip. There was only one mission: to walk through Paris all day taking photos. Everything else was wasted time. Surely the café waiters thought this strange. I’d order a tuna sandwich on baguette along with the check and be in and out of there in ten minutes.

Now, most of a lifetime later, my style has evolved. On my left side these days, always my wife. In my right hand, a camera. Recently, we stayed in Paris for a whole year. Some months into the trip we went to one of those Gibert Joseph stores on Saint Michel and bought a huge map of Paris. We taped it gently to our rental apartment wall and figured out what few streets we hadn’t walked through yet. And we always took our time eating lunch.

Something else has changed. Back then I always used to go hunting for that fleeting image, always tense, ready to pounce. Now these images come to me, mostly when I’m quiet inside. In the streets of Paris, surrounding us, there are always moments that puncture time itself and lead into a timeless realm. Call them gateways to the sacred or something else, they always arrive, unexpected. A little girl whispering in a boy’s ear in the corner café on Rue Rivoli. A well-dressed teacher with her three dancing students on Rue Monge. Three pigeons taking in the view of the Seine somewhere in the 16th. The bigger-than-life shadow of a painter by his easel under the Pont Neuf. You can never chase after these moments; they will only run away. In short, this is the continual challenge: to listen quietly with your eyes, and then if you’re lucky, whisk that moment forever onto a bit of film.