The only set back about this place, where we know, Paris lags behind in tourism planning, is the view of it from the top at night. However, the arc is closed at night, don't know who came up with such rules, he ought to be shot. Well, as we are all familiar with, Europeans are predominantly preoccuppied with themselves and the human rights issue. Having domestic problems which are a direct result of the lack of the rule of law due to social disintegration caused by irresponsible few individuals in the name of human dignity....sigh...
No matter, this the reason why I braved howling winds, and 6 deg C temperature and the big grave yard in the back ground to take some of the best night photos I have taken of Paris in the last decade. They are user friendly to download for royalty free use provided not being used for commercial exploitations. However, if highres versions are needed, do drop me a line.
The counters are opened, but no attendants are there. When I approached the guard, he says come back next day, they close at 1900hrs. Then he carried on reading his newspapers. You know, some of the most nasty people I have met on the planet are in Paris, particularly the north African immigrants. They behaved like the whole world owes them a living....it can be a result of tribe culture or their flight has forged such rough attitudes. Its most appalling. I have seen them and young east europeans squeeze through me in the train stations exploiting my paying the ticket so that they can enter free and squeeze the paying customer ou without the sense of human decency. Urinating in public against the walls in train stations and sleeping on chairs meant for commuters. If you can live with these, then you can probably look forward to navigating through the streets of dog pooh like mine fields, pigeon droppings everytime you go under a tree, or people turning left from the 4th lane on the right causing traffic jams. After 15 trips here in the past 20 years, I can observe Paris' rate od rapid deterioration, its sad, the city of love is now no more than a city of run down slump at most quarters due to lack of public funds and over taxed social schemes running the once mighty nation to the brink of bankruptcy if it has not already happened.
This is a picture of the grand arc that is a war monument remembering the people who died in the Nazi occupation.
The expensive Renaissance Hotel, this part of town is the financial nerve centre of the country, money slosh through here by the billions each day. You find the Societe Generale, KPMG, Ernst and Young all here.
The back of the Society Generale building fronted by the extension of the hotel that looked like the Grande Arc itself. The housing in the background has a nice three tone French Airforce camouflage painted on it.
France is a rugby nation, the only non commonwealth country that has a passion for this rough "gentleman" game. On the left of this photo, we see the dark portion, which is a road under construction, on the right, is the grave yard which the Arc is supposed to overlook. While the people play rugby after work.
The reverse angle, we look back at the arc from the platform some 30 ft suspended wooden planks and seeing the financial city on the left. It may look calm here, but the wind was howling and there are people with no regards for your photography, running across and shaking the planks. Most shots in this collection is a result of more than 100 shots, mostly taken repeatedly due to such inconsiderations causing the photos to blur out. As the light conditions were low, mostly were shot out of ISO400 at F22 over long exposures of 30 secs and above.
The Renaissance Hotel and its Grand Arc looking wing. The back portion is curved making this a very beautiful architecture looking like a bow from the air.
The Grande Arc at the end of the floating platform. Its really cold here. This shot is the 5th and the most successful one as there was a jogger and two couples and a police patrol that shook the floating platform on the previous shots, given its 400m distance from the arc and a wide 17mm angle shot, it blurred the small details of the buildings. One look at the photo closely you can tell what is amiss, the graffiti, people who are no longer social become animals. I am glad that I live in Singapore where this is not so wide spread, however, with some smaller racial groups, they are responsible for many of such crimes to society, same here, Paris is not France, its just another city of a population gone awry by preoccupation with self.
The apartment building with the camouflage paint scheme I mentioned about above.
This is the KPMG building. The sculpture in front shows a man with his head hollowed out and some square paper clip looking things on his right cheek and throat, maybe it meant, decent man, gagged by office politics and backmailed by administration and brains sucked dry by the system!
Just to prove that I am the one who took the pictures, here is me in fat gear subdermal and optidermally! Haha! Got one, a pull over, a singlet, a T shirt and a woolie! Still cold due to wind chill factor. See the two smoochers, they are one of the 4 people who destroyed 4 of my shots from this angle. The one that I mentioned above.