Tagged: Paris
Seven Super Shots? You decide.
There’s been a Seven Super Shots meme/challenge making the rounds on travel blogs over the past several days, started by the Hostelbookers.com blog. The rules are simple: bloggers are asked to select their own ‘Seven Super Shots’, one for each of the categories below. It’s certainly a good enough excuse to go through some old photos and share (some of them again). It was also interesting to see how how some of my personal favorites have changed over the years.
1. A photo that…takes my breath away
18-Jul-2009, Paris – It isn’t quite Man on Wire, but I liked this backdrop nonetheless. This guy was terrific, performing atop a 3ft X 3ft (1meter square) stone pedestal at the base of the Sacre Coeur steps. Certainly deserved a euro or two.
2. A photo that…makes me laugh or smile
13-Jun-2008, Vienna. More specifically, at the Wien Südbahnhof station. This is hanging in my bathroom and makes me smile everyday.
3. A photo that…makes me dream
29-May-2007, Belgrade. We were stuck in very heavy mid-afternoon traffic when I noticed this woman’s tired dreamy eyes. They can certainly provoke daydreaming. Probably my favorite shot from 2007.
4. A photo that…makes me think
17-Sep-2007, Berlin. The Holocaust Memorial.
5. A photo that…makes my mouth water
22-Aug-2011, Daegu, S. Korea. There’s nothing particularly good about the photo, but the meal was outstanding. And this wasn’t even everything.
6. A photo that…tells a story
April 1999, Psoltega, Nicaragua. A makeshift refugee camp about five or six months after the collapse of the Casitas Volcano (in background) in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. There’s a little more info and a few more images on my blog here.
7. A photo that…I am most proud of
08-Sep-2007, Zurich. A very hard call. For the time being I’m going with this shot, mainly because it was something that I clearly wasn’t expecting. I was simply hoping to get a quick snap of the woman on a cigarette break, and then remember being a bit upset when the car drove by. I couldn’t have planned the positioning if I tried.
Thoughts?
— —
The rules include nominating five other bloggers/photographers to hopefully join in. And I hope they do (if they haven’t already).
Fox Nomad
Old World Wanderings
Speck Treks
The Art of Slow Travel
The View From Fez
Like this:
3quarksdaily: The Accidental Parisian: A Conversation with David Downie
Great wide-ranging interview with the author of Paris, Paris: A Journey Into the City of Light. What most sparked my interest was his profound desire to walk, wherever he may be. That’s always been my preference when traveling, in places new, or those seemingly familiar.
Your feet seem to merge with the soil at times. Sometimes you think you can’t move. Sometimes you feel like you’re flying. But you’re always aware of your physical presence as a human — an animal — and as an element in the landscape.
and
Until I’ve paced out a walk, until I’ve gotten into the landscape or cityscape, I can’t know it. After 25 years in France, I still have to hoof it around to get what’s going on. This must be some extremely primitive reaction to the external world, something that wells up in my caveman soul.
3quarksdaily: The Accidental Parisian: A Conversation with David Downie.
Wilde Tomb
I was in Paris for five days last week – mostly work, little play – but did make the time to finally visit Père Lachaise, the cemetery where Frederic Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Jim Morrison, among other luminaries, are buried. The most interesting tomb is that of Oscar Wilde, whose fans really know how to pay their respects. Here’s a quick slide show I pieced together of the Wilde Tomb.
Dig it! Paris Considering ban on SUVs
An idea that needs to spread throughout Europe. Although given Slovenia’s collective car fetish, I can’t imagine anyone in Ljubljana with the cojones to propose it.
Via Inhabitat and Autoblog Green:
Denis Baupin, an environmental official in the mayor’s office, told RTL Radio that if you’re a Parisian with a gas guzzler, you should “sell it and buy a vehicle that’s compatible with city life. I’m sorry, but having a sport utility vehicle in a city makes no sense.”
You don’t have to own a really big brain to realize that most European cities weren’t made with big cars in mind.
Details are still pretty sketchy, but the ban could go into effect by late this year or early in 2012.
From Montmartre, originally uploaded by pirano.
Magnum Gallery Opens in Saint Germain des Prés
Via Artdaily:
On Friday, Magnum, the legendary photo collective founded by Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa and others, will opened a gallery in the heart of Saint Germain des Prés, in the former exhibition spaces of Robert Delpire, one of France’s most distinguished publishers and photography connoisseurs. The opening exhibition, “Demain/Hier” (tomorrow/yesterday) will be curated by Robert Delpire himself and will focus on the ‘new generation’ of Magnum photographers, set against the backdrop of those who founded the photographers’ collective decennia ago.
July pic(k)s
I felt like singing Free Bird when I spotted this sculpture on the back of a building on the Rue Guilleminot in Paris. My absolute favorite for the month was this one, but I posted it here already.
Twenty personal favorites from July, shot in Paris, Oslo and Rome, are here.
Previous pic(k)s of the month: [Jun 09] [May 09] [Apr 09] [Mar 09] [Feb 09] [Jan 09] [2008]
A few quick snaps in Montmartre
It isn’t quite Man on Wire, but I liked this backdrop nonetheless.
This guy was terrific, performing atop a 3ft X 3ft (1meter square) stone pedestal at the base of the Sacre Coeur steps last Saturday. Certainly deserved a euro or two.
‘A Moveable Feast’, menu revised
Sticking with the Paris theme:
Should publishers significantly rework new editions, in this case the ‘restored’ version of the Hemingway classic, A Moveable Feast?
Hell no, says A. E. Hotchner, a friend of Hemingway’s and author of the biography Papa Hemingway, in a piece in yesterday’s NYT.
This new edition, also published by Scribner, has been extensively reworked by a grandson who doesn’t like what the original said about his grandmother, Hemingway’s second wife. The grandson has removed several sections of the book’s final chapter and replaced them with other writing of Hemingway’s that the grandson feels paints his grandma in a more sympathetic light.
Hotcher, who was intimately involved with the manuscript and met several times with publisher Sribner prior to its initial posthumous publication, argues that such liberties dangerously misrepresent the book’s “actual genesis” and raises serious questions about the ethics of publishing.
A great read and interesting background on the book.
From Montmartre, originally uploaded by pirano.
SAS strike in Paris
Stumbled onto this on my way out on Sunday evening (19-Jul) at about 7 pm, striking SAS workers at De Gaulle’s Terminal 1. Day 4. Definitely livened the place up. Those who are down on the French for their language skills will be happy to know that half the signs were in English. The woman working the counter –presumably a Polish ‘strike breaker’?– remained quite cool and friendly.
A quick search of English language sources found no info. Anyone know more about the strike?
