Night photo tour - a whole different perspective

I think the highlight of this trip was a night photo tour that my niece had recommended to me. She did it last year and loved it! I will always remember this because it was the moment where I stopped using the auto settings on my camera and went to manual settings. OMG! what a difference that made to my pictures! I practiced the next day and somehow my pics are much sharper. I am convinced that I will take more classes when i get home.

Anyway back to the tour, it was supposed to be a group tour but I think due to the sporadic weather that weekend people must have shied away. So, as a bonus I was the only one and got a private lesson! My guide was David who seemed to have drunk 10 cups of expressos before he got there. But it was great because all of that energy was put into photography and in teaching me how to be a better photographer. He was so passionate about it all that it became contagious. We met at 9:30pm and finished up a little past midnight. Our focused on areas around the louvre. Now I'm hooked on night photos. It's a time when the city is quieter and you can actually have opportunities to take pictures without hordes of people. Will have to do this with my nieces when I'm home. One new thing during this tour was an outdoor exhibit by a famous architect. It's an active exhibit where you can touch and feel the work. The story of it was not posted anywhere so it was nice to have David tell me the meaning of it. It was the center spot of the city and honored the prisoners of auschwitz death camp. The marble columns are all the same height but displayed at different height from the ground level. Some go through the ground below so from where you are walking you see differents heights. This represented the different stages of life of the people. Some die very young (you only see 6 inches of the column), and some are 6+ feet tall (the person grew up to be someone great), there where some where the columns were flushed to the ground to mean that they died at birth. In the area there were some lights on the grounds were you see it as green if walking in one direction and red if walking from another. This is the artist's message on the right way to see the sculptures. Anyway, this exhibit made a really big impression on me.

I had so much fun taking pictures with david. He gets so excited whenever we take a great shot. In the beginning he was showing me how he was setting up my camera and had me push the button to take the picture. Then little by little he had me do some of it so that by the end of the night I was in full control of my camera. Sneaky but it really worked! My world just opened up and now I feel I have so much more to learn!