This shot was taken peeking
out from the very discrete monument to the deportation on the
tip of Ile de la Cité, just across from Notre Dame. It's an
extremely powerful space, and this view is just one more
brilliantly chilling aspect of what they have achieved here.
It's terribly tricky to get a good shot here as you have to
squat right down and sort of balance on one leg trying to
position something interesting in one of the little squares of
the black iron grill.
In this case I managed to get a couple of birds (what else?)
flying over the bridge, with the obelisk on the right and some
typically Parisian buildings on the left. It's true that the
river slopes down to the left which doesn't really respect the
Lordz of Fizzicks, but to be honest, do you want art, or do you
want a happy crappy holiday snap?
If it's the latter you're after, you just have to get off your
knees and head on up to the adjacent bridge and take a prim 'n
proper, judiciously horizontal, unfettered picture of a bridge
and show it to your grandmother who'll say it's lovely, and
you'll be none the wiser... ;-)
Apologies to creative grandmothers everywhere, by the way...
One other point, a small one maybe, but important if you want to
know the whole story... The centre of the image is a square, and
for that reason I made the whole image much squarer than the
original, by cropping. And what's more, I didn't just crop it
any old how. If you look carefully, you'll see that the little
gap in the top left-hand corner is almost exactly the same size
as the little gap in the bottom right, but the shapes of the
rectangles opposed at 90 degrees.
It's little details like these which go to make up a pleasingly
balanced picture, little elements echoing and complementing each
other which the viewer might not be aware of but which count
nevertheless. Thank you.
