If you visit Paris, check out the stunning renovation of the Samaritaine department store (shown in the 8mm fisheye view below). It is on the right bank adjacent to the Pont Neuf.
Samaritaine, Paris © Harold Davis
Since I am jet lagged I am going to keep this short and sweet: What great fun to be back in Paris with my camera! Just now, after dinner at the Brasserie Le Franklin, Julian K and I stumbled down to the Seine and photographed bridges, the Eiffel Tower, and more.
Under the Pont de Grenelle © Harold Davis
The appeal of a 2016 Rooftops of Paris image—besides the wonderful patterns of chimneys, dormer windows, and Mansard roofs—is an intentional, and vaguely anachronistic, antique look. In contrast, the 2018 Rooftops of Paris shown below, is a post-film digital high-dynamic range (HDR) image that is very modern in its aesthetic intentions.
This was a tricky image to make from a garret window high on the Montmartre Hill, and time-consuming to process as well (see below). This perhaps explains why I only got around to processing the RAW files (the digital analog to developing and printing) just now.
Rooftops of Paris © Harold Davis
The captures for this image were made from a small window, with my tripod awkwardly perched to take advantage of the setting sun receding behind a cloud bank. There were seven exposures, with each exposure using a 28mm moderate wide-angle focal-length lens at f/22 and ISO 64 on my Nikon D850. Exposure times varied from 1.3 seconds (lightest, for the foreground) to 1/80 of a second (darkest, for the sun burst). I used a combination of automated HDR, manual RAW processing, and layers and masking to create the final image.
For another recently processed view of Paris as landscape, click here.
My hope is to get back to Paris as soon as possible for more photography. For that, of course, we need vaccinations to beat the virus—and we need to stay thoughtful and vigilant.
Today we will journey to a labyrinth and church on the island of Gozo in the Malta archipelago, followed by the Île de la Cité along the banks of the Seine in Paris early in the morning of an autumn day. Both were photographed pre-pandemic in November, 2018, and first processed just now.
Maze and Church, Gozo © Harold Davis
Île de la Cité © Harold Davis
I spent some time over the last few days going through my archives for 2019, and processing images that I had somehow overlooked. 2019 was, of course, the last pre-pandemic year, and it was interesting on several levels to review my photographic life as it was then.
In this story, a selection of these newly processed 2019 images, starting with a view of the Paris skyline (from a workshop I was leading), through a well-known (and much photographed) ship wreck in Inverness, California, to an impressionistic in-camera-motion (“ICM”) image of a grove of trees in Florida (again, while leading a workshop), and finally a Lensbaby studio image of the legs of a model.
Tour Eiffel and La Defense © Harold Davis
Wreck of the Point Reyes © Harold Davis
Grove © Harold Davis
Legs © Harold Davis
There’s always something new to explore in Paris. Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur from the observatory on top of the Tour Montparnasse are shown in this photograph.
I can’t wait to be back exploring Paris with a select group of photographers in the spring of 2021. If you are interested in joining us, please check out the itinerary here, and download the Reservation Form by clicking here.
Note that for the most early-bird savings, please contact us for a reservation by December 31, 2019.
Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur © Harold Davis
Giverny Afternoon © Harold Davis
Sadly, the Monet gardens at Giverny have ended their program allowing artists, photographers, and writers to access the gardens before and after the public admission hours. I don’t know why this decision was made. All things must pass, and the only thing constant is change.
If you have been with me and my Photograph Paris in the Spring groups over the years, wasn’t it wonderful to wander and photograph in these gardens without the crowds? This is an opportunity that will not easily come again, so it is important to savor the time we did have, the photographs we made, and the memories.
If you are considering joining our group in Paris in the spring of 2021, don’t worry: there are many wonderful gardens and excursions in and near Paris, and we will find our way into some wonderful gardens and photographic adventures.
And keep in mind (in life as well as in photography) that since all things change, it makes huge sense to carpe diem.
Flowers at Giverny © Harold Davis
Willow Reflections, Giverny © Harold Davis
Giverny © Harold Davis
With the storm receding, from the top of the Tour Montparnasse near sunset, Paris looked like it could be any other rain-wracked landscape (of course, it is not, there is only one Paris), with La Défense clustered behind the almost-toy Eiffel Tower.
Paris Landscape © Harold Davis
How very, very sad to learn that Notre Dame is on fire. Here are some images I’ve made over the years with the thought that it is okay to remember the good things, and the hope that Notre Dame will be rebuilt to match. Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris is a 501(c)3 charity accepting donations to help to rebuild Notre Dame. This is a reminder that all things pass, so with good faith as one world let us join in the rebuilding—so we can help to make things better, not worse.
Crown of Notre Dame © Harold Davis
Spire © Harold Davis
Gargoyle © Harold Davis
Gargoyle © Harold Davis
Notre Dame © Harold Davis
Doors of Notre Dame © Harold Davis
I used my iPhone to snap this somewhat unusual view of the Parisian landscape from the heights of the 18th Arrondissement, a window high on the slopes of Montmartre, with the Eiffel Tour the only easily recognizable landmark. In a recent webinar for Topaz, I used the resulting iPhone JPEG to show the power of multi-RAW processing after turning the JPEG into a RAW (DNG) file using Topaz’s JPEG to RAW AI. I processed a darker verion for the sky, and a lighter version to bring out the detail in the foreground cityscape, and combined the two versions using a layer mask and gradient in Photoshop.
Eiffel Tower in Paris Landscape © Harold Davis
The common theme in these three monochromatic images taken in Paris is that they are about patterns—as seen in three dimensional architectural objects, but reduced to two apparent planes. And also where the patterns end, and where they do not extend.
Musee Picasso © Harold Davis
The image in the courtyard of the palace that houses the Musee Picasso (above) contrasts the regular patterns of windows in the background with the odd shape of the white ball thing in the foreground. Actually, there’s no way to know the scale of the white ball, which is interesting. Photography can render size as an illusion.
Below, the glorification-of-war frieze can be found in the Place Vendome on the very three dimensional Colonne Vendome—a sort of obelisk thing clad in cast-metal, three dimensions attempting to be two dimensions.
The Clash © Harold Davis
Finally, the spectacular colonnade that encompasses the Catholic church of the Madeleine (below) is inherently patterned, and three dimensional. But amid the op-art effect of the recession of the pillars, would you visually understand the three dimensional nature of the scene without the break in the pattern on the upper right?
Madeleine © Harold Davis
It is with some degree of melancholy that I say goodbye to Paris for this time, as I have “sailed” to warmer climes. The Maltese Islands are a different universe, and I write from my desk overlooking the ramparts of Valletta. But for now one last look over my shoulder at Paris Paris.
Paris Paris © Harold Davis
This is my last day in Paris until the spring. I took the Metro into Concorde, walked over to the Orangerie, and sat for a while and marveled at the wonderful installation of Monet’s mammoth water lilies, abstractions created based on his ponds at Giverny.
La Tour Eiffel © Harold Davis
Next, I wandered across the Tuileries to the Jeu de Paume. The most interesting exhibition there (at least to me) showed the work related to social injustice of Dorothea Lange. While not always the greatest photographer from a technical perspective (e.g. framing, composition, and exposure) she certainly had an eye for faces and telling details, and she cared. The caring may matter more than the technical considerations.
Manzanar diorama via iPhone capture © Harold Davis
What does a diorama of the World War II era Japanese-American internment camp at Manazar have to do with this? In a museum in Paris, looking at the contemporaneous photos of the camp by Lange, I was solipsistically struck with the thought that I had just been (a little more than a month ago) to the memorial museum on the site of Manazar in the arid Eastern Sierra. What a small world we live in, where one thing has consequences for other things, and there are no coincidences!
After I left the museum I wandered the banks of the Seine with my camera until it started to rain. Then I stopped into a restaurant for a late lunch, and made my way back to the hotel.
The car picks me up early tomorrow to get to Malta. I have enjoyed my relatively short visit to Paris, but I am also hoping for a bit warmer weather in the southern Mediterranean.
Last night as a lay under my quilt in my garret room I heard the wind in a racing howl across Paris. I fell asleep to the rhythm of the rain playing percussion on the roof.
Rainy Day in Paris © Harold Davis
Sure enough, in the morning it was indeed a rainy day in Paris, and the water drops danced on the glass of my window facing the Eiffel Tower. Yet somehow the new day brought light and promise beyond the storm, which washed the city at least a bit cleaner.
By midday the storm had broken, although the wind was still strong. Everyone seemed fresher and fortified in the new light from beyond the rain, even in the depths of the Metro where the music was more original and less lip-synched to Piaf. It’s hard not to admire Paris, although I have no real clue about what accounts for the existential magic.
High atop the hill of Montmartre sits the cathedral of Sacré-Cœur—which, as I’ve pointed out before, is emblematic (when constructed) of a hard-right quasi-fascism as encouraged by the Church. From a visual standpoint, it is kitsch and rococo, and just a bit weird.
Knocks against its politics of origin and the kitsch aesthetic aside, it is a hecka fun monument to photograph on the exterior (the interior not so much). The rear of the Sacré-Cœur exterior is shown here in an abstraction of wheels-within-wheels (arched arcades over arched arcades), and processed to look as much like a lithograph as a black and white photo.
Sacré-Cœur, exterior detail © Harold Davis
