Tower Segment
A portion of the Eiffel Tower just before midnight.
A portion of the Eiffel Tower just before midnight.
From the top of the Arc de Triomphe, traffic on the Champs Elysees after the rain.
For my first blog post of 2012, a return to familiar and loved subjects: train stations, train travel, Paris and, more broadly, Europe. I’ve returned to Paris after a 6 year absence from the city, and although I now have digital photo gear, I’m resisting temptation to reshoot old favourites. Well, mostly resisting.
In the fresh snow of late night Washington DC, the streets were quiet enough to be able to stand in the middle and take pictures. This is the National Gallery of Art’s East Gallery, taken from Pennsylvania Ave.
Another in my series taken from Toronto’s Park Hyatt, these buildings are somewhere around Yonge and College.
Aiming south from 18 floors above Bloor St West, the buildings of Toronto’s financial district are still quite active after midnight.
Outside the Navy Archives/Penn Quarter Metro station after a few hours of snowfall.
With the streets virtually empty immediately after a big snowfall, photography in major intersections gets a whole lot easier.
Fresh, wet flakes came to an end just before midnight. A Yamaha was parked out front.
1:30am, somewhere in the middle of PA, out of cell phone range, on a route that was anything but direct (thanks, Google).
Back in the city for the first time in more than 5 years, I had a checklist of shots to try. Subways, buildings, streetcars. But the chance to do long-exposure shots from an outdoor patio at the Park Hyatt’s 18th floor bar was a nice surprise. There will be more from this trip in the coming days, but here’s one of my favourites.
From Heroes Square in Budapest, this is a different take on a nighttime 360-degree panorama, using the “mini-planet” technique. The original is extremely large (583 megapixels – over 8 feet square if printed at 300 DPI), so it’s difficult to display on screen and still keep sharp. A challenge (and learning experience) to shoot — I plan for there to be more.
Set on an emerald blue lake, surrounded by the gentle mountains that mark the beginning of the Julian Alps, Bled has been a tourist favourite for decades. About a hundred decades, in fact, as the resort town of 5000 people is celebrating its thousandth year.
I was in the line to visit the ship’s Moroccan immigration officers when I noticed the guy in the line beside me. He looked, well, Moroccan. And in his hand was a Canadian passport. After reading wild tales of hucksters and scam artists, I was keen to know if the ship’s currency exchange rate was decent.
Plans coalesced on the beach in Lagos. Ready for a larger leap between cultures, I intended to cross the Strait of Gibraltar to spend about one week in Morocco. My guidebook had a seven day itinerary that sounded, like most other week-long guidebook itineraries of places I’ve never visited, to be a reasonable balance of perspective and breadth.
Going drinking last night was a wonderful reacquaintance with city life. Shops, bars, public transit, streetlights — the sweet signs of a major metropolitan area. And a break from hostelling, staying at Helen’s house in Wellington, was a perfect respite.