Travels with Rollei

Boulevard St. Germain, Paris, February 2013

While words have always been my prefered way of recording my travel experiences, in recent years I have dabbled with photography as a means of capturing the ambiance of foreign places. Since the moment earlier this year when I "discovered" my dad's antique Rolleicord, I have been curious how it would fare on the road.

Part of me worried that perhaps it was too bulky or too delicate for traveling. And what happens to film in airport X-ray machines? But I reminded myself that Erik Gauger, author of Notes from the Road—long one of my favorite travel blogs—uses a far larger and more cumbersome camera to take his ultra-vivid shots. Surely I could manage with the Rollei.

So in February, as I was heading out the door for a work trip to Algiers—with an extended layover in Paris with the lady friend en route—I squeezed the Rollei and some film into my carry-on bag.