Recently I have been busy stitching all those panoramas that I took during my trip to paris.

I wanted to share some of the ones I really liked so here goes.

I was lucky enough to spend a few weeks in an amazing apartment right next to the Eiffel Tower.

Panoramas are my true passion and I was looking for a great spot with a view to take some panos above the rooftops of Paris.

Every night at midnight, the Eiffel Tower turns of it’s lights. But what many people do not know, is that it starts sparkling one more time at exactly 1 am.

So while everyone has gone home to bed, the most magic moment happens when the Tower is pitch  black, but thousands of tiny flashes light it up for about 10 minutes. They all go off randomly which is purpose, however if you take a long exposure of a few seconds, you will notice that all those flashes will have gone off a few times each. What I love the most about long exposures is that you can record time. Something us humans can not do, so once the 3-6 second exposure was done, you end up with a beautiful Eiffel Tower completely built from those flashes. The whole structure of it is visible on your photo – something that is invisible to the eye.

I was amazed by this and so I stayed up every night til 1am and experiemented with this effect.

I think it is easier to let the photo speak, and you will see what I mean.

Doing night photography adds some additional challenges compared to daylight photography.
Being familiar with the camera in manual mode as well as being able to manually focus is essential.
I always focus manually as most of my shots are taken in low light – a time when the camera has difficulties to autofocus.
Some of the lenses that I shoot with are manual only anyway. E.g. the Zeiss 35mm – my favorite lens.

Shooting cityscapes means dealing with large contrasts (head lights from cars, illuminated buildings, street lights,…)
Then there are very dark parts to a night shot. Usually the sky (depending on how late it is), trees, etc.
It is very hard to expose and have both the highlights and the shadows exposed without burning out the highlights or just having black areas where the shadows should be. This is when I like to use HDR. However the shot I am sharing with you today is straight from camera.

“Arch and Champs”

One of the reasons I did not want to use HDR for the above image, is because I wanted to really bring out those stars of the street lights. Many people usually think you need some kind of star filter (they do exist). However you really don’t need one. Just shoot at f/22 and they appear automatically (caution image quality degrades a little at apertures this high). Had I shot a HDR (and thus exposed for the sky with a longer exposure) the overall contrast would have decreased and the street light stars would not be as prominent anymore.

There are exactly two buildings in the world that I love.

One is the Harbour Bridge in Sydney and the other one is the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Those massive hand-bolted steel constructions really do it for me.
I kept the best part of Paris for last. Living in a new apartment right next to the Eiffel Tower, I can get prime shots day and night, without any tourist head sticking in the frame

The first one is quite a famous one and I saw at least two dozen people take the shot while I took it.

The only difference is, that they all shot it handheld (at midnight) and I had my beloved Gitzo tripod and a Nodal Ninja Panorama Head (will post more about it another time). This way I got a nearly perfect vertical shot. The below photo is uncropped, unrotated and unedited. This was straight from camera.

It goes to show, if you want to retain max quality of your image (e.g. by shooting raw), it is also a good idea to try to frame your shot, so that you do not need to crop it in post. This reduces your image dimensions (effectively the megapixel of your image) and thus will prevent you from printing it as large as possible, should you wish to do so (and if not now, maybe at some future point in time).
I am a firm believer of not cropping the image unless really necessary. Try to frame up the shot before you take it, so there is no need for cropping in post.

“Eiffel Symmetry”

Here is another one that will get you giggling. Every night at exactly 1am the caretaker of the Eiffel Tower kills all the lights. Just like every other major building in Paris. They all switch off like a clockwork.
However last night, the caretaker must have been drunk or in some other happy condition, he ended up not switching off all the lights. He killed all but the top half of the tower. And so the Eiffel Tower was glowing happily all night long, like a huge Christmas candle. Ergo the title for the next shot

“Christmas Candle”