Paris
is often dubbed the city of light and love. As a father of two and husband of
one, I am yet to experience these attributes, although as a photographer, Paris
is eye candy at any time of year, with any gear and any intention in mind. Frantisek Staud marvels at the myriad attractions and photographic prospects on offer in Paris for Practical Photography and phototravels.net
Paris
is often dubbed the city of light and love. As a father of two and husband of
one, I am yet to experience these attributes, although as a photographer, Paris
is eye candy at any time of year, with any gear and any intention in mind.
The
Eiffel Tower and Parc du Champ
de Mars, Notre
Dame cathedral and Ile de la
Cite, Montmartre and
Sacre Coeur, Champs Elysees
with the Arc de Triomphe, chess
players and donkey riders in the Luxembourg gardens, avant-garde architecture
of Centre Georges Pompidou,
or Louvre Museum are all obvious
locations to indulge your passion. However, you will inevitably be planting
your tripod legs in holes made by years of tripod abuse. Indeed, the French
capital offers so many exciting sights per square meter that it is an almost
effortless
task to take an interesting photo. More of a challenge, however, is taking inventive
and innovative photos and I have tried several ways of transforming the ordinary:
I used extreme focal length lenses for unusual perspective - wide-angle ones allowed me to place people in the foreground with monuments in back (asking these “would-be models” for permission is highly recommended in Paris); long telephoto lenses of 105mm and more were extremely useful for compressing the cityscape into unnatural flat patterns.
I also kept loading one camera body with fast B&W films for casual people and street photography. While trying to find some less exploited photo opportunities, I found myself in the Parisian Metro which is an appealing location if you dare to pull out your camera around midnight and point it towards to the traveling accordion players.
An interesting off-the-beaten spot for photography in Paris can be found in several cemeteries. Having spent a day strolling through Cimetiere de Montmartre, Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise, and Cimetiere du Montparnasse I left these graveyards with many exposed rolls of film and an immense feeling that all remarkable foreigners travel to Paris, when they die. The graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Samuel Beckett, Henrich Heine, Vaclav Nijinsky and many others are situated there.
When
planning my photo-trip to Paris, I decided to coincide it with an illustrious
happening - the Bastille Day celebrations. Every year, the Parisians commemorate
the storming of the hated Bastille Prison on July 14, 1789, which started the
French Revolution and ended the monarchy in France. To remember the liberté,
égalité, fraternité movement, Paris dresses up in tricolor
standards, people dance at balls, cafés and bistros, lavish military
parade marches down the Champs-Elysées, aircraft roar overhead, French
Legion brass-bands perform in front of the Ecole Militaire, fireworks illuminate
the Eiffel Tower late at night
- all of which presents myriad photo opportunities.
The most rewarding outcome of my Parisian shoot was a result of coincidence rather than careful planning. While photographing the fireworks above Trocadero, I had my camera attached to a tripod, pointing at the Eiffel Tower with fireworks erupting above. I set an aperture of 5.6 on my 35/2 lens and left the shutter open for half a minute or so to capture a few outbursts before forwarding to next frame. Only on the light-box back home did I realize that a single photograph, one with no fireworks, captured the laser beams radiating from the middle of the tower with blurred bodies of spectators in front. Fuji Velvia exposed for more than one minute, well beyond manufacturer's recommendations, shows greenish tint which adds to the overall ethereal effect.
About 200 other photographs from Paris are displayed at: www.phototravels.net/paris