Perpignan Provia

Perpignan
Yashica Mat 124G
Fuji Provia 100F

"From the ice age", sang Morrissey of The Smiths, "to the dole age, there is but one concern". Whilst in France I took a lot of film with me, and had a bit of a film-off. Kodak Ektar, some old expired Ektachrome Plus, some new Ektachrome 100VS, some Fuji Provia slide film, Pro 400 negative film, even a couple of rolls of Velvia. Here's some Provia.

Provia is Fuji's conventional slide film. It has a straightforward colour palette, neither purple nor green nor yellow, and of course Photoshop can work wonders with it. Point it at grey concrete, as I seem to have done, and you get the colour of weakened sunlight. As far as I can tell, Provia is Latin for for the road, or something like that. People called Roger they go the road. Overall it's a bit boring. No, perhaps a better word is transparent. It gets out of the way, rather than stamping its personality all over an image.

Underexpose it a bit and you get nice colour saturation, generally without Velvia's purple skies (they go deep blue instead):

Perpignan itself has a university, which probably explains the graffiti. It has an attractive central boulevard with a river, which is a five-minute walk from the train station. The town doesn't really have many tourist attractions - the castle in the centre, and the cathedral, which was being renovated when I was there - but it's very attract-ive, despite being surrounded by giant roads.

 
It's only a few miles from the Spanish border, and didn't feel very French (there's much less dogshit on the pavements, for example).

I didn't fall in love with anyone there.

it'll get you like a case of anthrax
and that's something I don't want to catch