Aamir Zakaria Photography

It’s day 18 of my Paris pho­tog­ra­phy adven­ture, and I thought I’d try some­thing a lit­tle different.

Have you ever heard of La Défense?  It’s not even men­tioned in many of the tour books, and I sus­pect it’s not even on the radar screen of most Paris tourists.  I’ve been to Paris 4 times, and I’d bare­ly heard of it.

In case you thought most Paris busi­ness is con­duct­ed in those ele­gant 18th cen­tu­ry Napoleon­ic era Parisian build­ings, you would be wrong.  La Défense is where the real action is.

From a high van­tage point look­ing West, such as in this image I post­ed ear­li­er from the Arc de Tri­om­phe, you will notice a bunch of sky­scrap­ers in the distance.

This is La Défense, Europe’s largest pur­pose-built busi­ness dis­trict with 72 glass and steel build­ings and sky­scrap­ers, 180,000 dai­ly work­ers, and 38 mil­lion sq ft of office space. La Défense is home to more than 1,500 cor­po­rate head offices, includ­ing those of 15 of the top 50 com­pa­nies in the world!

So why are these sky­scrap­ers so far away? It turns out that after the Mont­par­nasse Tow­er was built, Parisians found it to be such a sore thumb that they banned any fur­ther con­struc­tion over 9 sto­ries tall. Hence La Défense.  Who would have thought that Paris big busi­ness was­n’t even con­duct­ed in Paris?

Vis­it­ing La Défense was an after­thought for me, and I could­n’t be hap­pi­er that I vis­it­ed. As I dis­em­barked my train, I felt like I had entered some­thing akin to Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion in New York City.  It was mas­sive and over­whelm­ing, like being on a total­ly dif­fer­ent plan­et from his­toric Paris.

As I emerged to the sur­face, the first thing I saw was the Grande Arche, the main tourist attrac­tion at La Défense.  I had seen pic­tures of it pri­or to my shoot, but they did­n’t pre­pare me for the scale of it.  It’s over twice as big as the Arc de Tri­om­phe.  Then I noticed the innu­mer­able mod­ern sky­scrap­ers, steel and glass gleam­ing in the sun.

Right off the bat, I want to try some­thing new which I thought would suit this cityscape per­fect­ly — a fish­eye panora­ma processed to look like a lit­tle planet.

Here’s an expla­na­tion of how I made this “plan­et panorama.”

Pic­ture oppor­tu­ni­ties abound in La Défense, and I feel like I just scratched the sur­face. I made more lens changes dur­ing this shoot than any oth­er, fran­ti­cal­ly switch­ing between fish­eye, stan­dard zoom, and telephoto.

The weath­er was great, and I cap­tured some beau­ti­ful reflec­tions off of some buildings.

Appar­ent­ly, even this many sky­scrap­ers won’t suffice.

There’s tons of great geom­e­try here — all kinds of curves, lines, angles, and perspectives.

I real­ly liked the stairs on the esplanade, with it’s white back­ground, con­verg­ing angles, and com­mu­ni­ty life.

Since it’s almost exclu­sive­ly a busi­ness dis­trict, it qui­et­ed down sig­nif­i­cant­ly after dark.  I’d been want­i­ng to find out why all the ham­burg­ers at sit-down restau­rants cost $20, so I decid­ed to get one at a bistro there while I wait­ed for the blue hour. The burg­er was good, but not that good.   Now I’ll stop com­plain­ing about the $12 burg­ers in San Francisco.

After din­ner, I wan­dered around some more and found this guy.

The final image on my shot list was the Japan Bridge, and I had a real­ly hard time find­ing it.  If you type in “Japan Bridge” on Apple maps, it will take you to Tokyo.   I some­how fig­ured out it was at 10 Rue Hoche.  You won’t want to miss this pic­ture opportunity.

No Paris Pho­tog­ra­phy adven­ture could be con­sid­ered com­plete with­out a vis­it to Ver­sailles, so I will make the pil­grim­age tomorrow.