Vespa & Whiskey

I'll be honest with you. I'd spent the day doing what the Quartier Bouffay does best — supporting the local hospitality industry with some enthusiasm. Somewhere between lunch and late afternoon I'd slipped into the beautiful Église Sainte-Croix, perhaps to balance the accounts a little.

Coming back out into the afternoon light, I turned a corner and stopped dead.

There it was. A Vespa, resting against a whiskey crate as casually as if it had always been there. Vintage, unhurried, completely itself. The kind of scene you spend years hoping to stumble across.

I reached for the Praktica MTL3 — the same camera and Pentacon 50mm f1.8 lens I first learned photography on in the 1980s — and didn't think twice. Some moments don't ask for deliberation.

Right place. Right time. Right camera.

Shot on Praktica MTL3 with Pentacon 50mm f1.8 — Quartier Bouffay, Nantes, France

Printed at 30 × 45 cm through WhiteWall in Berlin. Choose the bare print, acrylic glass, a mounted frame, or a floater frame — what the finishes actually mean.