You see, Rye and I haven't reviewed a movie in a really long time and I don't think I should be holding out hope for the masses at this point. I do read them, you know, so despite calls for reviews on gripping cinema such as, Warlock the Armaggedon, Subtitled in Arabic and Star Wars, I pulled down the submission box today.

 

We're not going to write reviews on those movies or any of the others suggested. Sorry about that.

 

Back to France.

 

I'd either have to recuse myself from reviewing Star Wars, do it under hypnosis or drink a lot of alcohol, because I have a thing about it.

OK, so like, the Eiffel Tower is big, man, really really big. I mean, we all know that and stuff, but it's pretty impressive.

 

 

So this being my first time in Paris and all and knowing that I am probably moving back to the US in a short time, I took the time to get a few shots of the Eiffel Tower. This, a standard Dave dusk shot, but with a note. The note is that this is not the entire tower. You will notice that the feature on the tower at treetop level is actually the first level up the tower.

 

 

And this a night shot. I should explain that for the first ten minutes of many night-time hours, there is a strobe light show on the side of the Eiffel Tower. Obviously, a picture doesn't do it justice. But, you can still get a pretty good feeling for what it looks like. The strobes are visible on the side of the tower, particularly in the middle section (the second floor). The tower also has this rotating double-light contraption on top that is pretty striking. More on that below.

 

 

There were a bunch of challenges with this photo, not the least of which was that I did not have a tripod. I put the camera on the top of the stone guard rail on the bank of the Seine to steady it. That worked out OK, but the double rotating lights create an interesting photographic dilemma: what do you want them to look like?

 

You see, if the exposure is short enough, as the one above is, they look like beams of light. If the exposure is longer, they will scribe an arc in the sky. If the exposure is long enough, they will actually complete a circle. I captured most of these effects whilst I was shooting, but I was really looking for the effect above. I got it by shooting it wide open at 1/4 s at ISO 200.