Aamir Zakaria Photography

On day 14 of my Paris pho­tog­ra­phy adven­ture, my main focus was to tour the city at night by bus. I’m a big fan of night pho­tog­ra­phy, and I want­ed to see if there were any major shots I had missed.

I had some time in the after­noon, so I head­ed to the Eif­fel Tow­er to try to get a shot of it reflect­ing in the pool by the Tro­cadero gardens.

When I was first get­ting seri­ous about my pho­tog­ra­phy, I had read about how the pros always brought two cam­era bod­ies along. I used to think that was exces­sive, but this was one time I was real­ly hap­py I had fol­lowed that advice. I got every­thing set­up to take the shot and real­ized that I had left my bat­tery pack at home. What a relief it was to have a backup.

This was anoth­er per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to use my ND fil­ter, which I talked about yes­ter­day. As you can see in this pic­ture tak­en with my iPhone, with an expo­sure time of 1/150 sec, the water in the pool is ripply.

Using long expo­sures on water can smooth out these rip­ples, giv­ing a nice smooth look. This is also use­ful when imag­ing water­falls. With my ND fil­ter and a 30 sec expo­sures, I got this:

This has been processed with HDR, and one of the prob­lems I find some­times with HDR is you get a “halo” effect around some of the objects.   If you look close­ly at the top of the Eif­fel Tow­er, you can hope­ful­ly see what I’m talk­ing about.  I used the heal­ing brush in Pho­to­shop to clean this up, giv­ing me this final image:

If you want to get this shot, you need to wait until the foun­tains are off, and then stand here:

It’s a long drop down the oth­er side, so be extreme­ly care­ful!  I was tempt­ed to move even fur­ther to left, but I don’t think that’s a very good idea, plus the sur­face is wet.  Also, if the foun­tains turn on when you are out there, you are going to get drenched.   The foun­tains turn on and off inter­mit­tent­ly, so wait for the foun­tains to turn off, step out care­ful­ly to take your shot, then come back to dry ground.

Tro­cadero Plaza was absolute­ly jam-packed with peo­ple watch­ing street performers.

For my night bus tour I chose Big Bus.  I’m endors­ing them, but they are a well-known name, they have an Eng­lish-speak­ing tour, and they have a tour specif­i­cal­ly for night­time, so it served my pur­pos­es.  Almost every­one on the tour wants to be on the top lev­el, which I high­ly rec­om­mend, and that did­n’t seem to be a prob­lem, since they run 4 buses.

The dif­fi­cul­ty tak­ing night shots on a bus is the move­ment.  This is a prob­lem for night pho­tog­ra­phy, since you need to take long expo­sures, and any move­ment what­so­ev­er is going to give you blur­ry pic­tures.  I used the fastest lens I had (i.e. the one with the widest aper­ture, the low­est f‑stop num­ber) and increased my ISO until I could take pic­tures with a shut­ter speed of at least 1/100 sec.

The tour start­ed at the Arc de Tri­om­phe, and the sun was set­ting while I was wait­ing in line, giv­ing me this pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty.  The edge of the Arc de Tri­om­phe is on the left side of the image.

I don’t know if it’s me or if there are lanterns every­where, but they do seem to show up in a lot of my images.  I’m def­i­nite­ly attract­ed to light sources.

Although I had already tak­en some nice views dur­ing this trip look­ing up Champs d’Élysées towards the Arc de Tri­om­phe, there were excep­tion­al views from the top of the bus look­ing back the oth­er way.  Bear in mind that none of the fol­low­ing shots are par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp due the afore­men­tioned expo­sure chal­lenges.  If noth­ing else, they can at least serve as “rough drafts” to come back and attempt lat­er with a tripod.

All of my shots were tak­en rough­ly at f/2.8, ISO 3200, 1/125 sec.

The down­side of hav­ing to shoot with a wide open aper­ture is I was­n’t able to keep every­thing in focus, as you can see above.  I’m hop­ing to try this shot again lat­er in the week from the Arc de Tri­om­phe, where I can use a tri­pod and close down my aperture.

The one area where the bus lin­gered for a few min­utes was at the Eif­fel Tow­er.  It was tru­ly gor­geous at the blue hour.   The col­ors in this shot are one of my favorites of all my Eif­fel Tow­er shots.

The roof of the Hôtel des Invalides looked absolute­ly beau­ti­ful at night, and I def­i­nite­ly want to try to go back there again.   If you can believe it, the entire roof is made of sol­id gold.  (In case you were won­der­ing, this is not a hotel for invalids!)  This is a tech­ni­cal­ly infe­ri­or image that does­n’t do it jus­tice, but it will at least give you an idea of how it looks at night.

Here are a few of the oth­er images I took:

One final tip: if you take this tour and ride on the top:  wear a warm jacket!

I think I’ll vis­it the Cen­tre Georges Pom­pi­dou tomorrow.