Without a doubt, the one thing I was most excited to see in Paris was this, the Eiffel Tower.
I have 218 images, most of which I plan on sharing over the next month or two. About half of those are images of this tower. In truth, about half of all the film I exposed in Paris was of this tower.
This was from my first day there, a cloudy, rainy day (it felt a lot like home) and the tower peeped out of the cloud cover here and there. It was one of my first glimpses of this tower, and one of my first photos of it.
Tags: Eiffel Tower Paris France film square overcast Holga Kodak Tri-X b&w Europe city urban Blue Moon Camera
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I have been holding off on posting any of these images for a few months now, for a couple of reasons. The big one is that I wanted to present them all at once, as a unit, as opposed to immediately posting just the all stars, then straggling the rest out over several weeks and months, interspersed with photos from around Oregon and other adventures. I thought that latter approach too disjointed. When I see photos from trips like that it is hard to really get a cohesive sense of a place, because the photographers goes back and forth. So I waited til they were all edited and scanned and post-processed. Then I waited some more.
And now I am posting all of them together. And really, this is going to take a couple of months. For the next two months or so, my stream will be nothing but Paris. I want the experience to be cohesive and I want it to be immersive. I want you to feel like you get to know this city a bit, to convey a bit of that feeling I had walking the streets of Paris for the first time in my life, eyes full of wonder and curiosity. For Paris is a magical city (more on that later).
I also decided I am going to post by subject. So this first chunk is all going to be Eiffel Tower photos. Eventually that will give way to the Louvre and then Versailles and then back to the Eiffel Tower and then Notre Dame and then the bridges of Paris (I continued my Bridgetown project while over there). I took along something like 8 cameras and over 10 years of experience. I made a lot of different photos of the same thing in a lot of different ways. Instead of making or showing a series that is cohesive in style, I want to show a series that is cohesive in subject but varied in style. I want to show just how much can be done with the same subject in a short span of time. And so you are about to see Eiffel Tower photos aplenty. Some will be with Holga. Some with Hasselblad. A couple with Pentax 6x7. Some in color. Others in B&W. Day. Night. Sunset. Rain. Fog. You get the idea, right? ;-) I think there is a lesson in that. A good one. One about making the obvious photos, and then pushing on to look for the not so obvious ones. About how you can really get to know a place in a week, and yet still have so much more to see.
And to help you along with that, now and then I will be popping in links to Google Street View, like this one here, so that you too can take a brief stroll down some Parisian avenues and see from yet another perspective what I saw and where I photographed it from.
Tags: Paris France Europe night Kodak Tri-X Hasselblad Eiffel Tower city urban reflection wet rain I miss Paris le sigh Blue Moon Camera
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Every night, on the hour, for five minutes the Eiffel Tower glitters and twinkles like a million stars. It is quite a sight to see, I think. Apparently plenty of others do too. I never quite understood this gathering though. You are not allowed to walk on the grass in this park, it is all fenced off with signs telling you such. Yet at night for these hourly occurrences people would congregate out on the grass with bottles of wine and sit and watch the show. I was not sure if this was allowed, or it was just done. I stayed behind the fence myself.
One thing I like about this photo is you get a bit of a feel for the scale of this tower. It really is huge, the tallest structure in Paris still. But it isn't just tall, it is massive too.
Tags: Eiffel Tower Paris France Hasselblad film night color lights urban city Europe travel square star gazing Blue Moon Camera
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Perhaps one of my more "standard" photos of this tower, which does not make me like it any less. In truth, just because I pursue "creative" photography so vigorously doesn't mean I dislike or am bored by the more obvious and straight-forward photos. I like those too, I just happen to have a near-insatiable curiosity which constantly pushes me to find what I am missing.
I have two tips to offer tonight. The first is for those of you who have messaged me about traveling to Paris. It is this:
1) If at all possible, learn French. At least enough to get you into trouble. It is a beautiful language and worth learning. What is more, you will find people a lot more accomodating over there if you at least attempt to communicate in their language instead of just assuming they know yours. Even if all you learn is "Parlez-vous anglais?" it is a start and a sign of respect for the fact that you are in their city and their culture and are aware of that. So hit your local library, check out a French in 3 months CD and fill up your IPod. It's what I did for two or three months before going and I could passably speak decently by the time I got over there. It also made me feel almost at home, the three major languages I heard walking the streets of Paris were French (of course), English and German, all of which to some degree or another were familiar to me. And that helped a lot. It is a bit nerve-wracking being somewhere where English is not the main language. So learn French. As much as you can cram in.
2) Tip number two is for photographers. Never settle for the first photo you make of someplace or some thing. Once something has caught your attention and stopped you, generally you make that first obvious photo and then a lot of photographers move on, spending more time looking at the backs of their cameras at the shot they just made instead of looking around for that next different shot of the same subject. Work your scene. Get that first photo out of the way. Then take three steps to your left and look again. Switch your camera to b&w. Get down low to the ground. Change lenses. Mark the spot and come back in five hours. Do something different. Force yourself to make ten more photos of whatever stopped you, all of them different in some way than the first photo. What you will generally find out is that 9 times out of 10 one of those later shots will turn out much better than the original.
Right, Greg? ;-)
As I was posting this image, this song by Wolf Gang came up on Grooveshark and these lyrics caught my ear and seemed appropriate with this image.
Illusions come illusions go
And if you leave you'll never go on
In the city
Where I'm from
There are lovers to the dawn
And you stayed up to see the sun
I couldn't wait that long
Tags: Paris Eiffel Tower France Europe tower sunset clouds sky square film Hasselblad color travel Blue Moon Camera
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This was one of those times that the increased latitude of film really came in handy.
Tags: Eiffel tower Paris France street light square Hasselblad film night city urban Europe Kodak Tri-X Blue Moon Camera
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