Tour d'Eiffel par Nuit (Eiffel Tower by Night)**

This is the Eiffel Tower by Night -- Paris's most famous landmark.

This photo was taken over the rooftops of Paris. Your ratings and

critiques are invited and most welcome. (If you rate harshly or

very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Please share your superior knowledge to help improve my

photography.) Thanks! Enjoy! John (All Parisian photos taken in

3-1/2-4 days, JC)

Taking such a photo is harder than might appear. The searchlight goes around fast and requires a fast ISO to capture it as a ray.

This was a stormy, cloudy night, which meant the clouds were caught and captured the ray of light going through them for maximum effect.

The angle of the light is important for photographic dynamism.

The light is more 'bluish' (Funny, it doesn't look 'bluish') I manipulated the 'color' control of the 'ambient light' for, I think 'fluorescent' or 'daylight' in order to get this particular 'color'.

Other, future uploads will show the light beam as 'bluish' light.

(As noted above, all photos taken around the same time were taken from the same window -- a hallway window affording the only view in a 9-story hotel of the Eiffel tower, which just happened to be down from my claustrophobic room.

John

Paris is a 'street photographer's paradise. I can't remember when I was more prolific and more 'right on' than when I was shooting for 3-1/2 or 4 days in Paris (while seeking medical treatment) in between appointments.

New views of everything 'jump out' at you.

It has been noted that Paris is just a collection of small villages that make a major city, and it seems correct.

Armed with a city map, a 5-day ticket for all the buses and subways (Metros--within a certain zone), it is possible to criss-cross the city in some comfort, even in late fall, start of winter in quite inclement weather.

More photos to come.

The French, after 9-11, as the rest of the civilized world, reacted with great alarm, and enacted their 'Operation Vigipirate' and began to crack down on photographers in 'sensitive' places, but I managed to shoot away in the Metro without one gendarme stopping me or wagging his finger at me (and I could show the photos on my digital screen to show my lack of malice if challenged).

Previously, the gendarmes and soldats (soldiers) with their submachine guns at the gares (train stations) were very chary of allowing photography of the trains and the train station setting, but that seems more or less to have disappeared, particularly I think when they see a guy like me, (non-Arab, older, professional equipment, looking experienced, not long hair and non-radical looking, taking photographs of trains, etc.)

And, it appears, 'Operation Vigipirate' was more to keep photographers from photographing the 'authorities' on their rounds (thus timing them and being able to maybe 'slip something dangerous through their midst unbeknownst' by use of photos -- more especially videos, I think, than still photographs from tourists.

Tourism is where the Parisian bread is buttered, and after the events in the 'banlieus' (suburbs) with car burnings and other expressions of racial unrest, the gendarmes were more concerned that my equipment be safe than that I take 'unsafe' photographs.

Paricular points of safety: Where the RER (Rapid Interurban Railway) trains intersect with the Metro, is where the suburban youths, often racially mixed, black and Muslim, hang out on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, and those stations are more to be avoided if one has expensive equipment dripping from one's neck and not easily concealable (as the Parisian crime rate is not low, and as I noted last year 'Where is Giuliani when they need him?')

Further observations from John

I didn't bring a tripod--stupid me.

John

The fact that photographers are not allowed to shoot in the tube or railway stations has nothing to do with the Vigipirate instructions. It has always been so, both for security reasons indeed and for legal rights issues.

Paris has always been one of the most difficult place to photograph - try to put a tripod on the pavewalk and you'll get what I mean. This fact has been further exacerbated recently because of a law on "image right" and its erroneous understanding by a large majority. People use to invoke this right each time they think they're featured on a photograph. This situation has already led to some clashes between photographers and "subjects".

You can figure this out by watching french newspapers, you'll notice how people's faces are now avoided, with the PJs trying to cut or blur heads in demonstrations for example.

All this to say the situation is pretty problematic here, I almost gave up on street style shooting in France for this reason.

Best,

Fred

Thank you for the insightful comment. I understand that 'Operation VigiPirate' really had to do with security of the police and the transportation industry, but after 9-11 the gendarmes invoked it to prevent me from shooting in the Gare de l'Est, if you can believe it, but I simply went around the next corner, and invoked 'tourists' rights' and like any tourist just took 'snapshots'.

It seems that if you have 'professional looking' equipment that people get 'up in arms' but if you have a digicam, people think nothing of it. I'm forever warned if I walk in stores, restaurants/bars, etc. if if I'm carrying 'big, professional cameras, but if I have a 35 mm small camera with small lens nobody seems to care. It's a form of discrimination -- I remarked about it in my 'comments', and it's as much about insurance, lawsuits, etc. as anything as well as 'trade secrets'.

As for keeping secrecy and obscuring images, I must say this, only one or two people in all of Paris tried to suggest I shouldn't be photographing them or even in the sacrosanct Metro. One or two Africans, perhaps followers of Islam in which the 'graven image of man' is blasphemous suggested I NOT take their photographs, but others seemed oblivious.

Maybe I just look like an 'ugly American' overeburdened with cameras and a wide-eyed gleam in my eye and out of place.

Or maybe my long lens and sometimes quick and surreptious manner have helped me. The gendarmes were absolutely no problem at all.

As to publishing, well I understand that the droits du public will influence what gets published, but as for the images I produced, they're not for French consumption, so unless they ban me from coming to France (and with open borders with other Schengen countries it'll be hard), I'm probably 'safe'.

I'm sorry that you've encountered such difficulties in the land of Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, etc. It's a sad state of affairs. Former contributor Alexander Ziegler of Germany (who writes me today) and I had a dialog found under one of my photographs about the law of the image rights of Germans. Germans often would say they had a veto right over being photographed, but Alexander showed me using German law that is malarky (nonsense), but publication rights are another thing altogether. (You can search my 2,000 comments if you want to find that or just ask me for Alexander's address if you want to communicate with him about that -- he's a very nice guy, well-educated, and a fine photographer with an original eye who no longer contributes here, and should be encouraged to return.

John (Crosley)

John,

I wasn't referring to "snapshot" looking equipment, your comment is right on. The public reacts more to big, pro-looking cameras than it would in front of small digicams.

As a consequence I now happen to shoot public events with my small FM3a and let the F5 & F6 home. This is fine for me who mostly work on documentary projects, but it isn't for PJs working with big DSLRs. They have to deal with people not wanting to be photographed, picture desks not wanting people faces to be recognizable and architectural elements falling under intellectual property rights (i.e. : you can't publish a commercial photograph showing the Eiffel tower unless you pay for to the company exploiting it, or reach a deal with them if you're a press agency). Just imagine how much hassles this is. Not to mention police asking you to stop taking pictures for whatever reasons : public safety, anti-terror laws, public order disturbance, officers not liking your face or look, and so on.

Amateurs are now more and more concerned too, surely not in the most touristic places, but anywhere else. When there's no obvious reason to photograph, then it becomes suspicious, both to citizens and authorities. It makes for an uneasy climate, not sure HCB would have felt very comfortable and prolific these days.

Maybe one problem is that there are - more and more - LESS places and things not belonging to a person or a company.

Some decades ago the society owned what was important to all their members. Nowadays the state as the representative of the society is withdrawing from all this and leaving it to private disposal and commerce, because they do not know how to finance it.

All these complaining people might in a way just imitate the habits of these occupiers of public space. It is a kind of mimicry, saying: Stop Mr., at least that smallest space around me is my private property and you got to pay for it if you want to use it, like I have to pay for all the other things nowaday.

That might not be the only reason for photographers problems but it is an important one I think, at least here in old Europe.

Security reasons are just another facet of this problem. You would not need to secure YOUR places, if there were not so many people who have no places of their own to secure anymore.

Thanks for your engagement and courage in undermining these habits John.

That is something I could never do so intensly. I mostly try to avoid trouble. And you are always in trouble when you point your camera at someone, or someones property, or what someone thinks his property is.

The least happening is that you have to answer silly questions like:

Why the hell do you take a photograph of THIS?

I'll keep pointing my camera at whatever, whenever, except when the 'Mafia' threatens, as where I am now.

John

Thanks for the advice. I never take offers that can't be refused.

I once toured Russia and met four (count 'em 'four' women whose brothers owned 'half' of a hotel apiece, and each one of them was 'offered' a buyout of their 'half' for a pittance and soon each one was involved in an automobile explosion which put each in the hospital for an average of six weeks.

The head of the Radisson Slavayanska Hotel, an Oklahoman, had security that was usually watchful in Moscow and Bill Clinton stayed at his hotel (he was 'half' owner) but one day he went for a ride on the Metro in Moscow a few years back and was gunned down.)

If you don't have obvious money (didn't have), you were not a target - I lived in Moscow and never had problems, and have recently moved about in Moscow, but regional Russia, or the long distance trains staions (vauxalls) are a different thing entirely.

Some day I'll write my experiences, but it'll be a novella, or a short story, I think -- too long for these pages.

Meantime prosperity bites Moscow, with the usually skinny kids now getting (some) double chins from eating McDonald's (pravda!-- meaning 'the truth' and I can personally verify) but not in the regions of Russia where 'sshee' a thin vegetable soup and no meat on the table is still a staple.

Disparity bites in Russia which is growing at 7% per annum, with the main part in Moscow.

Putin is greatly popular, and recently has completed a takeover of the media, with shutdown of REM-TV, which only 5% watched anyway, and he very popular anyway (and a relative by marriage, I am told is an aide????)

who knows?

I'm just a guy with a camera, who makes people usually smile when they view my digital screen.

More Paris photos to upload and hundred or two hundred more from elsewhere.

John

I remember that Henri Cartier-Bresson famously often hid his Leica under a napkin (serviette for those of you who are British, so no offense), and only took it out for THE shot).

Surely when he took the photo of prostitutes in a Mexican brothel/slum he was looked at askance and he never was photographed because he felt he took his life into his hands if his image were known, not because of any personal feelings of 'privacy' per se. He didn't want to be associated with the delivery of the 'news' that he was a 'big photographer' but just a guy with a small camera who just happened by. He felt his 'life depended on his anonymity' and anyone who knew he was in the middle of Shanhai's Gold riots, near the assassination of Ghandi, etc., would recognize that he was THERE with capitals, and open to being a possible target, IF people really KNEW who that surreptitious man really was.

I knew a friend of his from China, a Jimmy White who worked for the Associated Press, and he said Cartier-Bresson was 'most unassuming' when he worked in China for a while after World War II and during the fall of the Kuomintang -- a period when both were in China together.

Anonymity was his safety.

More later.

John (Crosley)

Alexander,

Welcome back to these pages.

Once again, your insightful comments have 'hit the nail on the head'!

However, if there's a problem, with digital shooting, I just turn off the digital review screen after each shot and continue firing and no one's the wiser, especially if I don't raise camera to eye for focusing -- which is helpful with a 12~24 mm Nikkor f 4 lens for the digital Nikon fans.

Some day I'll tell you about something far more interesting than 'invading' the very easy Paris Metro, but not now and maybe through another 'guise' or 'nom de plume' for which I may query Brian, as I want to keep my personal safety and travel privileges.

And, yes, whenever I go, I make about 5 to 50 friends per mile with my photography depending on whether people are on a weekend/holiday and have time on their hands to look at my digital screen or not (I'll often invite them for a quick look at a 'telling' shot' and often get 'thumbs up' and never once a 'thumbs down' on the street, but of course, I DO use discretion about whom I invite over and which photos I choose to display . . . natch. (naturally).

Best wishes (good to see you back Alex.)

John