New Year, New Job – Photoni.st

At the end of 2025, I quit my job of 5 years and looked for a new one. I don’t change job easily. In fact only once in 23 years to start the one I just quit. But I had reached a point of no return and didn’t feel I could stay any more.

Today, I started my new job, which involves some traveling, at least temporarily. So, like a 6 year old starting school, I decided to document it.

The commuting, on a weekly basis is to go from home to Lyon. Unfortunately, in France, in the middle of the country, you have mountains. And train lines are expensive to build. Until 2012, there was a slow train making the crossing. I even took it in 1997. But it wasn’t profitable and was closed. Now, to go from Bordeaux to Lyon, you have to go via Paris. That’s a 1,000km trip that takes 5 hours (you have to change train station in Paris for now, but there is a project to have a new fast train line that bypasses Paris from 2027).

As my mum is now alone, it suits me to travel via Paris twice a week so I can see her, it breaks the monotony for her, and I can help her with a few things. So I break the trip into two legs and spend the night in Paris. But that means spending 4 nights a week away from home.

For the trip, I decided to make things interesting by taking the photos with my phone’s super wide angle mode. It creates semi-panoramas that I find fun, though a bit useless when it comes time to print because nobody has books in that format. But experimenting with new formats and techniques keeps things interesting.

Be indulgent, I don’t have a computer to edit this post. That’s another experiment.

I started the the trip on Sunday night. It was freezing cold (literally it was -4).

The station is still being renovated. It’s been years now and I can’t see much progress. But all the scaffolding makes for interesting shots. The vertical panorama format definitively needs leading lines or you lose interest quickly.

I love signs and notices. It always reminds me that some people have create those signs thinking of other people they’ll never meet. In a lot of cases it’s their job and they have no merit and no gold stars for generosity, but there is always someone doing the thinking.

I can never resist taking photos of feet and legs sticking out. They’re like witnesses of a human at the other end that you can’t necessarily see. The train is kept fairly dark at night.

The train station in Paris is fairly busy for a Sunday night. It’s the end of Christmas holidays for a lot of people who waited until the last minute to go home.

I considered taking an Uber to my mum’s, but eventually decided on taking the subway. I’m a Parisian (adoptive) of 20 years so I should do what they do.

After a coupe of random power cuts (no reason provided), I arrived at my mum’s house and had dinner.

Night night.

Day #2 of the commuting trip. I leave the house at 6am to catch my train to Lyon. It’s freezing cold this morning again. I walk pretty fast to stay warm, but that’s not against the natives’ nature. Nobody ever has time in Paris. I didn’t notice when I was living there, but now it’s obvious to me. In our countryside things a much slower and peaceful.

In the subway, I can’t resits taking a few photos. As I use my phone nobody cares.

I recorded the noise ot closing doors because my wife likes it and complained she couldn’t hear it when looking at the photos.

I don’t know gare de Lyon well. I haven’t used it since I was a child in the 80s. It has changed a lot, but unlike Montparnasse, they kept some of the original features that make it typically 19th century.

Of course I can’t resist people watching when everybody is looking at the departure board. It’s like adulation of an electronic god.

As the train is announced long in advance, it’s not the usual rush to it. So you can take your time and be the weirdo that takes photo of trains. Again, phone = nobody gives a crap.

I even took the time to take a selfie before boarding.

Continuing to be the trainspotting weirdo that takes photos of the landscape at night with a camera that can’t really do it. The double glazing does strange things.