A few months ago, I sat down with Nancy McKeithen, Editor and Publisher of Fluent Magazine. Nancy interviewed me about a variety of photography-related topics – everything from my background, what I like to photograph, my frame of mind when I do, and gear that I use.
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Thinking of Paris as I get on a plane to fly to France this morning. The Eiffel Tower is easy to photograph but it is very difficult to photograph with a new perspective. When I took this almost 3 years ago, I was walking from the Trocadero towards the Tower and noticed these “things with pipes” pointing the same direction. I found out later these are water cannons – powerful fountains – that spray into a reflecting pool and are turned on occasionally.
I liked their weathered surface and how they were composed of many basic geometric shapes so I got low and close to feature them equally with the Tower. At the same time, I used a moderately long focal length (105mm) to compress the foreground and background, intentionally decreasing the perception of depth to make the cannons seem closer to the Tower than they actually are.
This has been one of my more successful images from that trip and, since the cannons are not well known, they always spark conversations with viewers online and at galleries who want to know what they are. I’m trying out some new gear on this trip and I hope I come home with as many images that I’m as happy with as I did the last trip. If I can, I’ll post initial edits of images from the trip as I go.
