Friday Photo #4

Eiffel Tower from Below

Holly and I took a trip to Paris and Belgium last summer. We visited the Eiffel Tower at the end of a long exhausting day, but it was a worthwhile time to be there. The tower in the fading daylight was quite magical.

Travel photography is challenging. Good habits like patience and tripods fall by the wayside when you're trying to get a photo in the midst of milling tourists. Many of my photos from this trip need to be rotated a bit since I didn't slow down enough to square things up. But this intentionally asymmetrical take on the tower works for me. It illustrates the massive size while keeping the tower instantly recognizable. I'm not terribly happy with the open sky at the top but at least the high clouds keep it active. I also need to spend some time opening up the shadows a bit, but I believe there's enough data there to give me some texture and color.

I bought a new lens for this trip and I love it: the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4. One of the big compromises with travel photography -- at least how I practice it -- is that changing lenses becomes rare. It's tough to carry a lot of lenses, and it's tough to find the time and place to change them. (One example: while on top of the Arc de Triomphe, I dropped my 28-105mm onto a concrete bench. Fortunately the UV filter took the impact, but it's the kind of risk you run when juggling multiple lenses in restricted quarters.)

Because of this, zooms rule for travel photography. And for what I like to do, the 17-40mm range is killer. The ultrawide 17mm can be used for unusual and fun takes like this photo, and the 40mm provides a very reasonable midrange for more standard shots. But where this lens really shines is for interior photos. A lens like this will give you outstanding interior shots of churches, museums, monuments, hotels rooms, train stations -- any indoor space. Plus this lens is just fast enough to get you some hand-held shots even without flash, especially if you can brace against a pillar or chair. Highly recommended.