Paris --North Toward The Butte at MontMartre

This is a view of Paris, from east of the Eiffel Tower, north toward

the Butte at Montmartre, Paris's highest point, including buildings

from the local neighborhood where this photo was taken -- a slightly

unusual landscape. 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

photoraphic knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks!

Enjoy! John.

I surely don't enjoy a superior photographic knowledge but I'm used to take pictures of this city. And I find that this one is definitely a good one with interesting lines and colors and a very pleasant light.

This viewpoint is my own 'public' but very privately-known place. I hope to keep going back there again and again. It's the same place where I shoot the Eiffel Tower -- the window to the left. I just stand in one place and take a photo like this and turn left and shoot the Eiffel Tower.

 

it means especially much to me that you've already shot the City of Lights.

 

John (Crosley)

I've never been to Paris, so please forgive me for being just a wee bit jealous. This is truly a beautiful view and must even be moreso in person. Thank you kindly for sharing, John. -Tammy

Few have seen this view of Paris, though is is maybe comparable to what one might see from some high floors of nearby buildings -- this is a view from one window of a very large hotel. It has one floor with windows with views beyond neighboring buildings and nothing else, and the only way you can see beyond the neighboring buildings is to know the name of the hotel and to go to a place next to the elevator(s) (hint), where there is (are) fabulous views -- I'm keeping that place secret for now, but if anyone were to go to Paris, I just might respond to an e-mailed inquiry . . .

 

All my photos of the Eiffel Tower were taken from the neighboring corner window, looking 90 degrees in the other direction, if that's any incentive.

 

Yes, every one.

 

All from the same window.

 

Look again at them, even though the folder says, 'from the same window' they really are -- no fudging.

 

Also, notice the Haussman (architect's name) style architecture or a continuation of his style, where the buildings are topped off no more than about seven stories, to give central Paris a view clear from skyscrapers -- though the periphery has many of them, and if one goes to the West to La Defense, one finds a whole office complex with them, but they fit together, just as architect Haussman gave Paris, after a great fire, broad boulevards, and central planning - a stroke of genius, but one, unfortunately that did not carry over to the U.S. with Washington D.C. and its radiating streets which cause all sorts of directional confusion -- even though it also is a 'planned city' atop a former malarial swamp.

 

Paris too had its malarial regions next to the Seine, I am sure, and its share of medieval living conditions which are enshrined in history, but history abounds in Paris and is lovingly embraced by the French -- luckily a major city that was not destroyed in WWII.

 

Paris is sooooo large that one visit does not do it justice and I suggest maybe starting Europe with a smaller city or planning on spending a long time in Paris, lest one be overwhelmed. I avoided Paris for 20 years before finally tackling it, neighborhood by neighborhood, or as they say arrondissement par arrondissement, each time staying in a different part of the city and often never straying from a neighborhood, walking among the shops and speaking with the locals, shopping as they shop.

 

It is said Paris is the largest city in the world that is just a collection of villages. It is also correct. It's just a series of neighborhoods that has 'city' status, and one could spend a lifetime 'knowing' Paris.

 

I hope you can someday 'get acquainted' with Paris. Airfares today are $489 RT from the US plus taxes from San Francisco, on a short notice for summer travel, with the sale set to expire promptly and not too many seats left. These fare sales spring up from time to time, so if you want to go, you have to subscribe to Internet fare alerts and USA today, which also announces them.

 

Advice: Don't get a cheap fare 'through London and take the train' -- the stopover will kill your pocketbook.

 

Best to you.

 

John (Crosley)

I've been there for nearly a month in my life, not counting the business trips. This is typically a Paris image, the clouds racing from the west. Do you know why the 16eme arrondissment is the "noble" part of Paris?

Because the prevailing western winds blew the smog of the coal heatings away from this quarter. Away from the 16th and towards the other, eastern quarters.

Best,

 

Luca

 

PS the Parisians are not as nice as Paris itself, but we know this, do we?

Yes, not only that, but also the Parisiens, yes, the Parisiens.

 

At one time in my life the Parisiens were absolutely insufferable, rude, overbearing and with too much gall for my tastes and I then lived in New York, but with the advent of the channel tunnel and the Eurostar (Chunnel train) menus are printed in English and a certain civility towards English speakers has overtaken the famously rude French speakers who inhabit the capital.

 

Now, I speak just a little French, and try wherever I go, so that may give me a little extra cachet with the locals, plus I am not of the 'this is Tuesday so it must be Belgium . . . . category of travelers . . . and often stay in just one arrondissement . . . for an entire trip . . . except for journeys on the Metro or go for giant walking trips health permitting, so the Parisiens tend to accept me, and I accept them as well.

 

They also tolerate me and with my giant cameras, I often get asked if I'm like Doisneau (don't pronounce the 's') or Romy, and I tell them 'sort of' and 'in a way' but certainly not exhaustive, like I'd like to be.

 

I could be stuck in Paris all the rest of my life and end up with endlessly interesting photographic captures -- it is the most productive place I've ever been in terms of output per number of shutter clicks, although Ukraine also is extremely interesting (and much more affordable).

 

And, I can afford to eat out in Ukraine, which I cannot in Paris. The Haussmann and other architecture is simply stunning and I can't say too much about the city except one must live there for a long time not to be intimidated -- I have spent literally months there, from time to time just to 'get acquainted' with various neighborhoods -- for Paris is just an agglomeration of neighborhoods, as has famously been said (with great truth).

 

Try walking Paris with a pro camera, and talking French with the French taking into account their point of view, show some intelligence (and great courtesy) and you may find them not so off-putting. They generally are very civil to me, after some very, very (world record) rude experiences when I was younger.

 

;-))

 

John (Crosley)