Delightful Doors of Paris

This month I've been posting some of my more mysterious photos from a trip I took to Paris in May of 2010, when our trip home was delayed due to an Icelandic ash cloud that is again disrupting European air travel. These are my last Parisian photos for now, moving on to something new in June.

Below are some stone, wood, and wrought iron carvings on and surrounding unique doors in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. I love the bright red front door of my house outside San Francisco, but I've gotta say it would be mighty cool to have a lion carving greet me when I walk through the door...

--Gigi

Details of Paris

 No gargoyles today, but some other images of Paris that caught my eye last May.

The wrought iron sign for a hotel on a side street

Bicycles for rent along the side of the road

Riding the metro (wish all public transportation signs were as beautiful!)

 --Gigi

Different Views from Notre Dame

The Thinker gargoyle's view

  Climbing the steps to the bell tower

 Applying a little art to the gargoyles

--Gigi

Less Famous Gargoyles of Notre Dame

Continuing with mysterious views of Paris, here are some of the lesser known gargoyles of Notre Dame. (You can see some of the more famous carvings here and here.)

The gargoyles below can all be seen from the same bell tower level as the famous ones, nearly 400 steps up a worn stone spiral staircase.

--Gigi

Paris, City of Light

A year ago at this time, we were in Paris. It would be over a week before the Icelandic Ash Cloud would delay our journey home on a series of marathon plane flights, so we were still enjoying the city. I've already posted many of my photos of the gargoyles of Notre Dame Cathedral. I thought this month I'd post some of my other more mysterious photos from Paris (including some of Notre Dame's less famous gargoyles).

I'll start today with a literal interpretation of the City of Light: the gorgeous old lamp posts that line the city's streets.

--Gigi

The Gargoyles Remain the Same. My View Has Changed.

Before moving on, one last look at a few of the gargoyles of Notre Dame.

Contrasting last week's photos, below are a few of my more recent photographs of the iconic stone figures on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

These three photos were taken using a lensbaby lens, which is basically a bending plastic tube that you physically push and pull to focus on one tiny "sweet spot" in your field of view. Frustrating, yes. But a lot of fun, too.

I love the possibilities of this lens, but I also miss black and white film. Yes, there's always Photoshop to convert color photos into black and white. Something of the mystery of photography is gone when you can snap hundreds of photos without thinking about it, though. With digital, we often miss out on savoring the few special images we captured on film during a trip.

Whenever I have room in my bag -- which isn't as often as I'd like -- I take my Holga plastic camera with me. It shoots 120 film and takes square pictures. Again, you can always crop a photo in Photoshop, but it's rather magical to frame a photo just as you want it and then see how the light falls in the print you end up with. Maybe I'll find some of my Holga photos to scan for my next post.

-- Gigi

The Gargoyles of Notre Dame

The gargoyles that first inspired my imagination are the gargoyles of Notre Dame in Paris. Although the cathedral was constructed in the 1200s, the gargoyles weren't added until the 1800s -- a romantic addition to the Gothic cathedral.

I first visited them when I was a kid in the 1980s, dragged along to France by my anthropologist mother. I was fussy because I hated the food in France (oh, what a silly child I was...). But as a fan of Scooby Doo and Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, I was enamored with the mysterious stone creatures at Notre Dame.

The photos I took with a pink plastic 110 film camera will remain in a shoe box in my parents' house and never see the light of day. When I went back and visited Paris on my own, though, I discovered the mystery in these stone carvings all over again. Below are a few of the first decent photos I took of the gargoyles of Notre Dame in the 1990s.

They look out over the city, watching. 

 

Each one is a completely unique creature with its own personality.

The photos above were shot with black and white 35mm film. When I first moved to San Francisco, I spent hours in the community darkroom of the Harvey Milk Photo Center developing prints of photos like these.

I've since switched to a digital camera, and have accumulated more lenses than I could afford as a teenager. But these early photos remain some of my favorites.

--Gigi