I arrived in Paris from Geneva, and had the first evening by myself, so decided to wander around along the Seine, and then head to the Louvre after sunset. It rained a bit when I was travelling from Orly airport to Paris, so there were plenty of puddles. I took the cover photo above from a bridge, then spotted a few puddles down by the river, and decided to head down there to see if I could get some reflections.
I took this photo of Notre Dame lying down on the ground to be able to fit the entire reflection in the frame. Normally I almost always prefer people in my photos, but now I can start to understand landscape photographers a bit more.
After a quick pizza I headed over to the Louvre.
One of the pyramids at the Louvre. This time rather than lying down on the ground I instead used the camera’s live view feature holding it down just above ground level.
I headed inside, and started to wander around. I had heard that the Louvre was big, and the buildings looked pretty sizeable from the outside, but I had not quite realised how big it actually was. The Louvre is huge. You turn a corner, expecting a small room, and a whole new museum opens up.
Some Roman statue. I probably should have made a note of what it was.It is pretty fascinating how they could turn a block of marble into something that looks quite life like.All over the museum there were people sitting or standing drawing statues and paintings.Willem Stueuerwald “Ruines de l’abbaye de Heisterbach” (1863). I am amazed at how the old masters managed to capture the light in the scenes.There are big paintings and there are big paintings. Here I wanted to include a person for scale.In the south section of the museum they host Mona Lisa. There were signs shepherding people to the painting.There was a barricade a few steps away from Mona Lisa. This must have been low season, because I have seen photos of bigger crowds. Without too much hassle I made it to the front and got a picture of the painting.Mona Lisa. I had heard it would be small, so was surprised that it was actually not all that small. It is 77×53 cm according to Google.Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson “Atala Portee au Tombeau”. Some of these master painters had an amazing sense for light.This painting was so big that I could not fit it all in the frame no matter how far back I went.
Exhausted, but quite content, I headed back to the hotel after only having seen what must have been a fraction of the artwork on display at the Louvre. I had an early start the following day. You can see the Paris dance photos in the “Sous Le Ciel de Paris” blogpost.
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