Paris—No 6

MERRY CHRISTMAS from the Patrick Family!

Galaeries Lafayette, Paris, France.

Paris—No 5

 

When people talk about things that are “over the top,” I think of Palace of Versailles, which is about twelve miles outside of Paris and an easy train ride.  

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.  Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy of the Ancient Regime.

According to one of the write-ups within the Versailles, at its high point, to run and maintain this palace, it took about 20% of all the taxes collected by the French government—now that is living in style.

Today’s photo is of the hall of mirrors.  I manually focused my camera about one third of the way into the scene and then held it over my head and clicked away.  My main concern was keeping the camera level.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D800, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 28mm, ISO 1600, f/8 at 1/60^th of a second. 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 4—applied Vivid preset during import, set white and black points, increased shadows and decreased highlights and added vibrance and clarity.

Paris—No 4

There are certain places in the world that no matter how good cameras get, they will no be able to capture the beauty of the scene. La Sainte-Chapelle is one of those places.

The chapel is located on Ile de la Cite and was the royal chapel for King Louis IX.  The chapel is considered among the greatest Gothic architectures.

Every time I have visited the La Sainte-Chapelle, some part of it has been under restoration; therefore, a photo of the entire chapel would include some not-so-picturesque scaffolding.  In addition, the chapel is dark but because light streaming through the stained glass windows has a high dynamic range of light—again complicating the photo taking process. 

My Paris trip allowed me to use my Nikon D800 much more than I have ever used it.  I was quite surprised and happy with two elements of the camera:  (1) its ability to produce clean photos at much higher ISOs than the Nikon D3x; and (2) a very large dynamic range of the sensor—overall, probably a stop or two more than the Nikon D3.

My post processing included some work in Photoshop CS5 because I wanted to bring out the details and Lighroom would did not produce the results that I wanted.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D800, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 28mm, ISO 2500, f/3.5 at 1/15^th of a second (braced against some scaffolding).

Post Processing:

Lightroom 4—applied Standard preset during import, set white and black points, increased shadows and decreased highlights and added vibrance and clarity.

Photoshop CS5—applied nik Color Efex Pro Detail Extractor and Tonal Contrast filters and sharpened photo using high pass filter method with blending mode set to overlay.

Paris—No 3

 

In my first post, I mentioned that museums were one of my favorite things about Paris.  If you go to Paris, I recommend that you get the museum pass that is for specified number of days and allows you to get into more than 60 different museums in and around Paris.  Great way to see a lot of the museums of Paris.

I do not consider today’s photo as a great photo—it may not even be a good one.  But, it is one that I really like—for some reason!
 The photo was taken inside Musse D’Orsay.  The museum is the home of some of the best Impressionist paintings—probably my favorite school of painting.  Musse D’Orsay building was a terminal for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.  It became obsolete because of longer trains.  The architecture is great.  There are two large clocks that looks-out over the city.  I first thought that I would wait for the people to clear the room but as I stood there, I began to think that the people really added to the scene.  I wished that I could have used flash, but photographs are not allowed within the museum (even though you see everyone taking photos with their point-and-shoots) and I did not want to risk having security kick me out!
I could not decide whether I like this better in color or black and white, so I included both in this post.
Enjoy. 
Camera settings:  Nikon D800, 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 28mm, ISO 320, f/8 at 60^th of a second. 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 4—applied Standard preset during import, set white and black points, increased shadows and decreased highlights and added vibrance and clarity.