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At the end of the Champs Elysees stands the famous Arch de Triomphe. This triumphal arch honors those who fought for France, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. On the inside and the top of the arc there are all of the names of generals and wars fought. Underneath is the Tomb_of_the_unknown_soldier from World War I.

The Arc stands in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, also known as the Place l‘Etoile. It is a really large roundabout, with lots of traffic and no less than 12 major roads coming together. Trying to cross this roundabout would be madness so there are tunnels that take you from the sidewalks into the center of the roundabout.

It turned out that our Museum Pass provided entry into the Arc itself. This means you can climb this seemingly endless spiral staircase to the top (see below – hand held). I did not count the steps, but it took forever – believe me on this. The views are of course magnificent, but . . . . no tripods allowed! This makes it so much harder to get decent night shots.

The Arc is huge, so large in fact that in 1919, Charles Godefroy flew his bi-plane through it.

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Here is a shot of a typical street with a canal in Amsterdam. Not all streets have canals of course, but there is a lot of water (as is the case in much of the western part of Holland) in Amsterdam. It is of course famous for it many canals.

Linda and I walked and walked in this fabulous city. It is vibrant and very picturesque.

Sadly, there was a strike on by the workers of the city and there was garbage everywhere as it had not been collected. So sad to see such a wonderful city portrayed in such a way. On the train, a total stranger had heard us speak English and, as we entered Amsterdam, came up to us and, in very broken English, apologized for the garbage. At first we had no idea what he was talking about, but the moment we stepped out of the station, all became clear.

However, this did not spoil our appreciation of this wonderful city. We walked down little cobble-stoned streets, dodging the bicycles (which were EVERYWHERE) and stopping at every shoe shop and bakery we stumbled upon (and there are many of them, believe me). The bakeries were fun. I had told Linda of my favorite baked goodies so we had to try them all of course. We stocked up on things like Spekulaas, Gevulde Koek and Stroopwafels and munched our way through the streets of Amsterdam.

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Here are some windmills. Not from the Zaansche Schans as indicated in the previous post, but from a place called Kinderdijk.

Kinderdijk is famous for its collection of windmills. There are 19 of them clustered together, more than anywhere else in the Netherlands. While not all 19 are visible in the picture below, there are quite a few. I can count 13. How about you?

This shot is an HDR, but is only made from 2 exposures. One exposed for the grass and water, the other for the sky.

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So Linda and I visited Holland too, not just Paris. There is a lot of water in Holland. Not surprising really as 2/5 of Holland lies below sea level. It’s why there are windmills in Holland, many were built to pump water.

There is a region called De Zaansche Schans, where there are a bunch of windmills in working order. There is one setup as a saw mill and another for grinding wheat. Yes, wind power was put to good use in the old days, kind of ironic that wind is once again a power source that is popular.

The shot below is taken just around the corner of those windmills (don’ worry, I’ll be posting pictures of them too). I loved the sky and the wide angle view of the water and house, just seem to make the composition come together for me. The two ducks were a bonus.

This is an HDR, made from 3 exposures each two stops apart.

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Here is a non-HDR shot just for a change. THe courtyard of the famous Louvre Museum. The home of the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo statue.

This was taken on a Saturday night and the crowds were just amazing. I have shots taken closer, but (a) my wide angle lens (17mm on my full frame Canon 5D) was just not wide enough and (b) dispite the long exposures (which usually makes moving subject invisible), I could not get a clean shot. So I backed up and used the green hedge as a barrier to hide all the people.

So how did I do? This place is awesome, by day as well as by night.

I’ll admit to being somewhat mystified as to why someone would build such a modern structure here, in contrast with this magnificent old architectural gem of a building. I guess because of exactly that, the contrast. Also, it seems to grow on you after a while and eventually feels “it fits”. Anyway, it makes for some great photographic adventure as there is no limit to the compositions and mixtures of texture that can be shot in this courtyard.

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The Château de Versailles is nothing less than magnificent.

The court of Versailles was the center of political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution.

The rooms are simply amazing, the most spectacular being the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces), the setting for many of the ceremonies of the French Court.

One of the things that struck me in particular were the wonderful ceilings. Every room was different! Sometimes the ceilings were covered in spectacular paintings, others has wonderful architectural features, etc.

The one in the picture below is an example. Just one room of many. Amazing the work that must have gone into this. They certainly do not build them like that anymore!

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It was about 6 am. Our hotel was right next to the Louvre and only a stone’s throw away from the Seine river which flows right through Paris.

I had just spent some time shooting the Louvre and the little Arc de Triomphe (see previous post) and decided to wander on and cross the river. The sky was magnificent although not a lot of color. Doing HDR shots of scenes with lots of sky can be a challenge as you’ll often get a lot of noise. This shot was one of those and presented an excellent opportunity to try the recently upgraded Topaz Denoise 4. It did an excellent job as you can see.

About this shot. Right in the center of the picture, you can see the top of the Eiffel Tower. The building in front of that is the Musee D’Orsay, which is housed in a former railway station. The museum is famous as it holds the largest collection of impressionist master pieces in the world. Linda and I wanted to visit this museum too, but we just totally ran out of time. How sad is that!

This is the left bank of the river Seine and the bridge you see there is the Pont Royal (I am standing on the Pont du Carrousel).

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OK, so I am afraid of heights! There. I’ve said it. Now you know.

Linda dragged me up to the top of the Eiffel Tower one evening. Yes, all the way up to that section you see here in this picture. Did I enjoy the ride? No, not one bit. Was I pleased I went? Absolutely! (Thank you Linda for making me do it). We got some wonderful night shots from the top and I’m sure I’ll be posting them in due course. The views are simply amazing, albeit bloody scary.

At the top, you arrive in an enclosed area which is surprising large for something that looks so tiny from the ground (that should tell you how high this thing is). The views from this area are mightily impressive as you can imagine you can see for miles in all direction. The French even posted little signs around the area of well known cities and how many miles away they were from that spot. The scariest part was going outside. You see, there is another section at the top that is open, sure it has a steel mesh fence, but it is still open. Needless to say, Linda just had to get me out onto that section as well. And because of the mesh, I had to go right to the edge to stick my lens through to get any worthwhile shots. Standing THAT high up and THAT close to the edge is a very humbling experience, believe me.

Other than the scary part, the experience was exhilarating and photographically rewarding. This shot below was taken from the second tier, which is only about one third up. Every hour, on the hour, the Eiffel Tower puts on a light show with thousands of blinking lights putting on quite a display.

During the weekends and summer vacation days, the Eiffel Tower can get as many as 30,000 visitors (in one day!). Linda and I can attest to this as we came here on a Saturday and found the lines for tickets to be miles long. We came back on a Tuesday evening (in May so no school vacation) and stood in line for a mere 5 minutes.

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There are two Arc de Triomphes in Paris. The famous one stands in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, the other one, half the size and seen here, stands directly between the Louvre museum and the Tuileries Gardens. It is called the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. What is so awesome about this is that it stands at the beginning of the “Axe Historique” (historical axis), a line of monuments, buildings and thoroughfares that extends from the center of Paris to the West.

In fact, you can see it on this picture.

If you look through the arch, you can see the obelisk on the Place de la Concorde. Behind that the Arc de Triomphe and those tall buildings in the background is La Defense, the business district of Paris. You are looking right through the Tuileries Gardens and the Champs Elysees. One straight line. It is about 5 miles long. Cool.

This shot was taken at about 6am on a weekday. You can tell because there are no people. During the day, there are hundreds of people here and on the weekends, the place is positively swarming.

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I just returned from a business trip in the UK. Thanks to awkward flight schedules and not being able to leave when I originally wanted to, I ended up having to spend a day in London. I know! Life can be tough, but someone has to do it, so I weathered the not to nice weather and set out to see what I could find.

This first shot of the Houses of Parliament was shot early in the evening. It was actually raining although you can’t tell from the picture. I was a little annoyed as the section just under Big Ben is totally obscured in scaffolding and did not lend itself to any nice shots from the bridge. Also a bit puzzling was the fact that there were no lights on the sections to the extreme left and right. This is why I chose THIS shot as the ones taken later have a bigger contrast between the lit up parts and the dark sections. Taken as three shots each 2 stops apart.

In this second one it is very clear that it was raining. I made sure I had my lens hood on as this helps prevent getting rain drops on the lens. I find that nothing is more frustrating than getting home and finding your pictures ruined by small droplets of water. Very hard to photoshop away, especially if there are multiple.

You can also see the scaffolding pretty clearly in this shot. A shame. I’ll just have to go back one day

This next shot is taken on Trafalgar Square. Mid-morning, but I had already been up for hours. I found it a bit challenging to get a good composition on Trafalgar Square, but settled on this view of the fountain.

This last one was a bit of an experiment. I just wanted a phone booth, but after playing with the bracketed shots, I really  liked how this came out. Pretty iconic shot.

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