Sainte-Chappelle, Paris

Sainte-Chapelle is within the palace area where French kings lived until the 14th on the Île de la Cité in the heart of historical Paris. Completed in 1248, the gothic church is famous for its collection of 13th century stained-glass windows. It is an absolutely beautiful place. I posted some images of the chapel right after my visit three weeks ago. Here are a couple of more to go with the other images.

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Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Paris

After leaving the Louvre and heading west towards the Tuileries and the Champs Élysées, you immediately come upon the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napolean’s victories – short lived victories as it turned out – this is the little brother of the larger, more famous Arc de Triomphe at the far western end of the Champs Élysées. The weather god was definitely with me my first full day in Paris. Sunny, crystal clear, warm but not hot, a great day to walk myself ragged, which is exactly what I ended up doing.

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Sunset, Paris

Walking around, I think, is the best way to get to know a city, and Paris is the quintessential walking city. I arrived at my hotel in Paris on 2 July at around 7 in the evening. I put my bag down, got out my camera, and off I went. By 9:30 or so when this picture was taken, I had gotten something to eat, was thoroughly jet-lagged, and stumbling back to my hotel. The late daylight was disconcerting. Everywhere I went in France, it did not get dark until 10 or so in the evening. I suppose daylight savings time plus France being on the more or less western side of the Central Europe time zone makes for some late sunsets in high summer. I can’t say I like this. I prefer nightfall coming a bit earlier, even in the summer. Be that as it may, the soft, late sunlight on the buildings fronting Boulevard Saint Michel was spectacular. Enough to forget the jet-lag for a few more minutes.

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Imperial Past, Hue, Vietnam

I gave in to the inevitable recently and have spent the last couple of weeks uploading images to cloud storage. Around 39,000 image files of one kind or another, almost 700GB worth of photos. In the process I started fooling around with old photos. I keep telling myself I am going to add some galleries to this website. And maybe I will one of these days. In the meantime, this is an image was taken on the grounds of the Imperial City of Vietnam’s final dynasty that made Hue its capital from 1804 to the middle of the 20th century. It’s from a trip to Hue towards the end of 2016. Definitely a photoshopped image – “enhanced” sky, a lot of saturation, and two filters, one to bring out the greens in the foliage, a second adding soft focus and a bit of diffusion – going after the dreamlike feeling that comes with walking around this magnificent but rundown monument to the past.

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