Aamir Zakaria Photography

Paris Photography, a 3‑week adventure: Day 1

I just start­ed a 3 week Paris pho­tog­ra­phy adven­ture. I did­n’t get around to pho­tograph­ing much on day 1, but I made a vow to try to take at least one pic­ture of the Eif­fel Tow­er each day.

The ini­tial goal of this trip was to devel­op mate­r­i­al for a book about pho­tograph­ing Paris. That may hap­pen some day, but right now I am focused on one struc­ture: The Eif­fel Tow­er. If you’ve seen my pho­to stream, you know I love icon­ic archi­tec­ture. I still don’t get tired of pho­tograph­ing the Gold­en Gate Bridge, even after the hun­dreds of shots I’ve already tak­en. I think the same about the Eif­fel Tow­er. The goal is twofold: 1) take as many unique and eye-catch­ing pho­tographs as pos­si­ble, from dif­fer­ent angles, dif­fer­ent parts of the city, dif­fer­ent times of day, dif­fer­ent moods, etc. (at least 1 per day, if I’m able); and 2) record my tech­ni­cal obser­va­tions as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to write a guide for oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers wish­ing to pho­to­graph the Eif­fel Tow­er, espe­cial­ly those vis­it­ing from out of town for only a few days.

Nowa­days, when I trav­el, I look for pho­tog­ra­phy guides for the same rea­son. I was shocked that the only such guide I could find for Paris was writ­ten by Albert Mold­vay and Eri­ka Fabi­an 35 years ago, before dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy!  There is def­i­nite­ly a niche to be filled here, as Paris is one of the most pho­tographed cities in the world (right up there with my home­town of San Francisco).

I did man­age to get to a point at the Lou­vre (see pic­ture above) where I could actu­al­ly (bare­ly) see the Eif­fel Tow­er. I am going to try to main­tain some dis­ci­pline for my trip, because the pho­to­graph­ic dis­trac­tions are many!