Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Street sailing


Soon the Salon nautique de Paris (Boat show) will begin. This show, where the most beautiful boats will be displayed, will take place Porte de Versailles, in the 15th arrondissement. Problem: how do you take those huge boats to the exhibition hall? Answer: you stick them on big trucks, you ask the help of the Police and you wait for the traffic to slow down! Here, I photographed the arrival of a big catamaran in the Montparnasse area on its way to Porte de Versailles.

54 comments:

  1. With or without the catamaran, this is a wonderful photo. Full of colour and movement, it has such life in it. Love it!

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  2. Oh, yeah, so it is!! I was wondering what that big thing was!

    I agree with Lynn, nice shot (especially considering it's dark and things are moving!) I'm amazed the colors come out so good even shot at night! Good job, Eric, thanks for this little present (any shot of the streets of Paris is a present to me! :) Love it!

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  3. At about what time did you take this photo? Do they do this in the middle of the night?

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  4. It's interesting to me to see how the motorcycles are blurred but the background is clear. Good shot!

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  5. Not a very usual thing to see a boat on a street, even in Paris!!! LOL...
    The advertising of the Salon Nautique has the usual fancy parisian touch...

    Greetings from Chile!

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  6. You know, if it was my picture taken in the dark with moving objects, I probably would have upped the brightness and contrast a bit, perhaps added a bit of saturation to the yellows and reds. That's just me, though. I'm sure this photo was naturally amazing coming from you ;)

    My uncle would be so jealous! He loves him some big boats. No no, no mid-life crisis for him!

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  7. I, too, have seen similar sights, by far the most bizarre of which was a caravan of trucks relocating a wooden house (that had been cut into sections) from wherever it had originally been situated to wherever its new owner was intending to “resurrect” it - like a kind of architectural Frankenstein. As the trucks passed me, I could look into almost all the rooms of this butchered house, thanks to the wrecker’s rough and ready cross-sectioning, which, now that I picture it again in my mind, gave it the semblance of a giant doll house for…well, giant dolls. I do remember thinking, however, that there was something else odd about this dreamlike image. We tend to think of a house, and the lives lived in it, as belonging to a very particular place, and that even when that house is demolished, the “spirit” of the building and its human history remain somehow attached - albeit virtually - to the place where it once stood. In this sense, the unexpected mobility of this material and immaterial past involves the overcoming of a sense of uncanniness, a feeling that one of the more durable certainties of our reality has suddenly imploded. After all, when a house is no longer wedded to the ground, and a ship no longer sails on water, what is to stop us from thinking that some of our other ideas about life, the universe, and everything, are not also susceptible - and perhaps in dire need of - revision?

    Thanks for prompting this reverie, Eric.

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  8. boats and cars in the same place, very unsual... great moment for a pic!!!

    greetings from Trujillo-Peru
    -giu-

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  9. Interesting photo Eric. Was this at the Place de la Gaité? And they all seem to be driving on the left hand side of the road...are we still in Paris?

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  10. La photo est impressionnante, c'est marrant je suis souvent allé à ce salon et je me suis jamais posé la question de savoir comment ils arrivaient.
    tres bonne idee de photo,bravo


    The photograph is impressive, it is funny I often went to this living room and I ever put myself the question to know how they arrived. very good idea of photograph, cheer

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  11. Olivier, merci de la traduction en anglais.

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  12. Wow, I just clicked on the link and see that the whole boat is "shrink wrapped" not just the sails. I can picture them sticking it through one of those new machines at the airporet where they wrap your luggage in plastic.

    Airline counter lady: "So sir, do you have any suspicious packages and did you pack them yourself?"

    Catamaran owner: "No, just a catamaran, and yes, I packed it myself."

    Airline counter lady: "BUUTTT...you didn't pack any cheese did you?!"

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  13. Love this flashy, colorful shot! Amazing, as usual.

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  14. Lynn - the painting/sketch you did for Eric and posted on your blog is wonderful. You said you did it quickly, which is hard to believe because it's so beautiful. Do you sell your work too?

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  15. Amazing catch Eric, as we don't really see the truck, looks like the boat flies over the traffic! Surreal.

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  16. je viens de voir sur itélé ce que tu nous explique aujourd'hui a savoir la semaine prochaine ce sera les deux bateaux de l'america cup( 24 métres) alors au cas ou...

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  17. Michael - cheese joke: hilarious!

    Thanks for that about the artwork, it was a small thank you to Eric for this great space and the community he has pulled together. Yes i sell them. Something like that, taking only ten mins, well i'd take a tenner! From the client's point of view, it's still an original though not a work of art; a quick sketch is all it is. Slightly more worked up sketch would be £45. Commissions are welcome! Other pieces range from £120 - 500; depends what it is. And here endeth my use of Eric's kind space for setting out my stall! Eek ... apologies Eric!

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  18. BTW - Ssshhh whisper to Soosha: i got another wink from Eric!! he he but don't go telling everybody..

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  19. Eek not sure what happened there, that was meant to be from me, Soosha at my usual link.

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  20. looking at the photo first time i though the boat was on the top of the bus station and policemen arrive to get it down:)

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  21. pssst!....STOP PRESS ...Dr. A has made another appearance at the homeless page...STOP PRESS...

    I must say he seems to be calmly making a point now...

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  22. Actually... why have i assumed Dr. A is a man? How horribly sexist of me!

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  23. lol @ Michael! Good for you, lynn. You're so lucky. louis, very thought provoking. Off to work now, I'll bore you all to death later!

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  24. Lynn...your painting is fantastic. When I clicked on it, it came up large and beautiful...rose and Eiffel...perfect.
    I can't help but remember the traffic jams in Paris and now transporting big boats! Traffic is always such a problem even here in our little city of Lexington.

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  25. Hi Eric, I've been visiting quite often but haven't left a comment yet. Followed Lynn and Soosha here, actually. Now that my desktop cycles almost exclusively through your pictures, I suppose it's only fair I left you one. Lovely photos :)

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  26. beautiful...:P
    and i could leave comments tonight~~thx godness!!!
    and like those motorbikes in this photo!!
    and expecting those big boats~~
    :P
    jing from shanghai

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  27. Soosha's link links (?) are very useful to have but that is a LOT of reading. Can no-one just tell me how to make links on these comment boxes? that's all i want to know.

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  28. oh and London DP is quite interesting today ...

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  29. Lynn,
    Elle est une marrionette, donc féminin.
    Regardez sa (?) photo.

    Michael
    Quel fromage!

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  30. m.benaut: Moi, j'suis une marionette? ou qui? je ne comprends pas. Et, quel fromage? What cheese? Oh... where are my french books when i need them. Michael help pls!

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  31. Ah, je pense que vous avez signifie Dr. A non? J'espere que oui en tout cas! Oui, maintenant je l'ai regarde - c'est bizarre sa photo. Il est designee. Goodness I'm sure that's all wrong, but i try....:) someone will put me right i am sure.

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  32. Lynn - I don't understand the marionette comment, but think the cheese comment is referring to the joke above.

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  33. ok lynn, since the comment box wont accept my attempt at explaining because it considered my code bad HTML, I'll have to try another way. do all this:

    *a href="insert url here"*Whatever you want to describe your link here*/a*

    Then add in the opening "<" and closing ">" in place of where I put "*". Hope that worked and helped!

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  34. How far back was that beautiful blue and yellow photo of the Eiffel Tower? I'm not feeling too good, so I don't wanna search for it, but an idea just popped into my head for a sweet PDP avatar.

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  35. Boats in the middle of Paris reminded me of one of my favourite jokes. Stop me if you've heard it before...

    =====

    Dead ahead, through the pitch-black night, the ship's captain sees a light on a collision course with his ship.
    He sends a signal: "Change your course ten degrees east."

    "Change yours ten degrees west," comes the reply.

    The captain responds, "I'm a United States Navy captain! Change your course, now!"

    "I'm a seaman second class," the next message reads. "Change your course ten degrees west, Sir."

    The captain is furious. "I'm a battleship! I'm not changing course!"

    "I'm a lighthouse. Your decision..."

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  36. Love it, Michael and thanks for the lingo help. Think the marionette thing is because Dr. A's profile is a cartoon. I think.
    Ok Soosha I'll try that thanks. Sorry you're not feeling well. Perhaps see you here later amongst boats cars and the social scene that is Eric.
    Off to watch son play guitar to a crowd of thousands now. Well, that's in my mind. It's a school thing. Still playing guitar to an audience though...! (very proud)

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  37. As if boats weren't enough to slow the traffic down in Paris, look at what they are doing to remedy the situation in Denmark!! Speed Bandits

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  38. Nice shot. I love the movement in the picture. Around what time did you take this as there isn't much traffic on the street.

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  39. Michael stop, heard it before!!! j/k, but it's really quite impossible to stop you before you finish it on here! And thanks for the link, but that's not the one I was talking about. It was back in Feb. or Mar. and I found it. The one he took from Ave. New York.

    lynn, hope your son rocks the house!

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  40. Thanks scott, but I tend to take my virus advice from credible sources, not people who randomly pop up on blogs.

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  41. Not only is the cat shrink wrapped, but it's atilt without sails. Pretty good sailing. Reminds me of the 007 scene where Bond puts the Mustang up on two wheels to slide between two buildings. Ummm...Jill St. John beside him. And the Brits drive on the left, so la!

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  42. Personalized SPAM, now? Damn, they're getting good!

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  43. Guys, need your help. My original idea for a PDP av just isn't working out, as happens often with good ideas that are hard to execute. If you wouldn't mind, head over to my blog to cast your vote for your fave PDP photo. Assuming Eric doesn't mind, of course. If you do, Eric, then I'll pull the post on my blog. Otherwise, I'm hoping to make a kick butt PDP avatar that anyone can use.

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  44. Michael,
    I can't believe your Speed Bandit. If a pretty young thing waved what she waved in Lexington, the police would escort her to jail or one of the thousand good Christian ministers (some kind of church on every corner) would do a citizen's arrest or something similar. LOL
    We need your sense of humor to brighten our days. Thanks!

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  45. lol! I only just now had a child free moment to check out the Speed Bandits vid. Interesting and...thought provoking, among other things!

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  46. Johnny & Soosha...glad you liked the speed bandits video. Quite interesting no? I was surprised when I went over to Copenhagen Daily Photo not to see a version made especially for us!

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  47. lol! I certainly wouldn't have minded!

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