HDR Photography
Each Sunday morning during my 2017 sabbatical, I would start a load of wash in the apartment building’s single shared washing machine and head to Philz Coffee on Shattuck (don’t look for it—it’s not there anymore). I’d stand on this sunny corner in the perfect weather with an enormous coffee and watch the world for a minute… Before heading back to change over the laundry.
I wasn’t surprised to find a plethora of churches in Paris, but I was surprised by their array of designs. This first example neatly abuts the sidewalk, filling its lot.
By comparison, this next example is set back from the street and exhibits a vertical reflection plane.
This last case has a wholly different geometry and stonework hue. Am I even sure this is a church? Christian imagery appears on so many buildings.
In an otherwise carefully symmetrized Parisian setting, I wonder how this very high-entropy chair agglomeration formed? They aren’t set in a ring for people to chat, or even in a way that allows all of them to be used. Perhaps the grounds crew clustered them to make space for their own maintenance activities?
Though I complained about the mud of Parisian pathways, there is something perfect about the bright morning sun reflecting off the pale material.
Even on a chilly weekday morning in late November, this Parisian street market was busy. The narrow cobblestone streets were busy with shoppers.
The narrowness of the streets is really apparent at a corner, where even a wide-angle lens can’t open them up. (I did appreciate the mild irony of travel across the planet to find a corner Mexican restaurant that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Berkeley.)
A late-fall storm slicked the stones of Les Invalides and the sidewalk across the, uh, moat from it.
When evening arrives in autumnal Paris, the limestone city shifts from white to gray and the shops that once blended into the background become beacons.
