Paris in Black & White

It's a beautiful, sunny, fairly warm day so I *must* get outside! I went downtown yesterday and walked around for a couple of hours with my camera. Only took one photo though. :-) This morning I got up and heard that the downtown area was closed off because over night about 60 dead birds had been found. They are still investigating the cause.



This is a photo I made a few years ago in Paris when I was still using film. As you can probably tell, I used a very wide angle lens (20mm lens on a 35mm SLR) and got very close to the sculpture in order to get as much perspective distortion as I could. Looking through my viewfinder I tried several different angles and locations to stand until I found the one I liked the best, this one. I wanted to make sure I got the Eiffel Tower in the background since that is iconic for Paris. Without it in the frame it would not be clear where this photo was taken and I wanted it to say Paris. With it, there is no doubt. I carefully chose the point I focused on and then selected a very small aperture so that I could be sure both the sculpture in the foreground and the Eiffel Tower in the background would be in focus. I then waited several minutes until a boat came by in just the right position with none of its edges overlapping any other edges in the photo. Snap!