I’ve been focused on that other passion of mine as of late. No, not that one you perverts. The other one. It only took me six months, but I finally got around to culling through and processing my Paris photos. (I got a little distracted with photographing M.’s soccer and basketball games.)
I’m sort of proud of these, so even though this hosting site compresses the hell out of them, degrading them significantly from the originals and annoying the fuck out of me, I’m posting them regardless, with a few explanatory notes. Higher quality versions are located on my Gallery page. which doesn’t compress them as much. I’m about 1/3 of the way through my photo roll from that trip, so I may upload more in a future post.
I took this one on my first night. I was excited to see the Eiffel Tower at sunset, so I hustled over there when the sun started going down. This one and the one below are shots that I took on my 20 minute walk to the Tower from my hotel. I darkened the foreground in both because I love how it contrasts with the lavender sky and the Tower in the background.
I brought my wide-angle lens to Paris precisely to take shots like this one and the one below, both of which are seriously dulled out on this page compared to the originals. They look way better in the Gallery.
I love my wide angle lens so much. The distortion and disorientation it creates are so cool to me. I’ve taken a lot of my favorite pictures with my wide angle lens and the one I had with my old Nikon D700. I need to find a way to use this lens more often.
I had planned to take a lot more shots of cafes at night, but sightseeing got in the way. These two and another one I may post later were pretty much it. I couldn’t decide if I liked the black and white or color one more, so I’m posting both. The bottom one looks oversaturated but the cafe really did appear this red and yellow. I actually toned those colors down a bit in Lightroom, and they’re still prominent. I love French cafes. Love.
Most of my walkabouts were late morning, midday, and early afternoon, which made for really harsh light conditions because the sun was overhead and really strong. I didn’t like the way some of these looked in color, so I converted them to black and white, and they actually came out nice. This was in front of Pont Alexandre III, which has beautiful statues that I got up close and personal with. I like the guy on the bike in front of the bridge. Very French looking dude and his folding bike reminds me of my Brompton.
There’s so much going on in this one that it’s one of my favorites from the trip. The cherub has this mischievous smile on his face while he’s grabbing that creepy ass looking fish by the head preparing to stab him. Or maybe he’s just riding the fish and defending himself from something? He’s not really looking at the fish, is he? I guess it depends on your outlook in life. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you hate fish or are you a pescatarian? Then someone graffitied some kind of symbol on his chest – I have no clue what it is. I just think all of it looks really cool with the cherub’s smiling aggression, his modern tattoo, the wackadoo fish eyeball staring at me while I took the picture, and the ornate and comparatively serious lanterns in the background.
Here’s Alexander looking serene and in charge of his bridge. I kept this one in color because it works, and I like the contrast between the rough, textured stone and that smooth and glistening gold sword he’s holding.
A little boring, this one. A little touristy, but it’s one of my favorite monuments in the world and looks kind of cool in black and white (and better in the Gallery). I also managed to get a shot with no cars and buses, which is no small feat in that busy intersection.
I’m a sucker for anything showing Napoleon getting crowned. Or anything Napoleon for that matter. What a life that guy had. This was on the outside of the Arc De Triomphe. More short men should be in charge of shit. That’s what I think.
I loved the outside of the suitcase-shaped Louis Vuitton store on the Champs-Élysées. Extraordinary and soooooo unique. Or so I thought, until I learned that there’s one similar to it in New York.
A painted ceiling in Louis XIV’s house in Versailles. “House.” Lmfao. Just room after room of stunning art. The two immediately below look like they were on walls, but they were on the ceiling too. Truly incredible.
But you can’t take it with you, can you, Louie? No you can’t.
The secret door in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom that she used to escape the hordes of pissed off people who invaded Versailles during the French Revolution. The original ‘safe room.’
A bust of Marcus Aurelius, one of my favorite philosophers, in the massive and maze-like gardens outside the palace. Benson Boone with a beard.
In one of my favorite passages in The Meditations, Marcus refers to sex and having an orgasm as nothing more than a ‘spasmodic ejection of mucus.’
“Honey, why are you so angry that I had sex with that guy when I was on vacation? It was just a spasmodic ejection of mucus, honey. It’s like blowing your nose – why are you making such a big deal about it?”
He’s right of course, but you may want to float this progressive concept with your partner before you go fuck someone else, just in case they view orgasms as carrying more weight than a used Kleenex. IYKTYK.
The photos don’t do this incredible garden justice. So beautiful and immaculately maintained. The perfection of the organization and landscaping really appealed to my Virgo sensibilities. Unfortunately the light conditions were awful, with a ton of shadows and a yellowish cast that my novice Lightroom skills couldn’t solve without fucking up other parts of the photo. I didn’t want to convert this to black and white and lose the greenery. Maybe I’ll keep working on these two.
I mean…. these fountains were cool as FUCK. This is Apollo’s fountain. He was my favorite Greek god back in the day.
I loved this one — the Enceladus fountain. It’s taken from the story of the fall of the Titans, buried under the rocks of Olympus by the gods they tried to dethrone. The intricacy of the desperate and pained expression on his face, the surrounding rocks as he’s getting buried – it’s just incredible work. I only wish I had the means to elevate myself a bit higher so I could have gotten a better angle for this shot, but I think it came out decently, especially in that sun.
And this is me in the famous Hall of Mirrors, which was crammed full of people. I wanted a shot of myself in one of the mirrors with part of a chandelier and no tourists in the background. It took me forever, but I finally got it. Too bad I didn’t think to remove my tour guide earpiece first. Those mirrors could use some Windex too. Womp womp.
