Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Sunset on the Ponts des Arts


The light was really beautiful when I passed Le Pont de Arts towards 4 o'clock this afternoon and I could not help, but stopping and taking a photo. It's an easy picture I know, but who cares! FYI le Pont des arts (the original one) was completed in 1804 and it was the first metal bridge in Paris. There was a toll to cross it originally, but I don't know when they stopped it (it would be very odd today if we had to pay to cross the river...). It has been totally renovated between 1981 and 1984 after a péniche hit it.

13 comments:

  1. How nice of this couple to pose for you! The light suits them, and the bridge.

    ReplyDelete
  2. An easy picture? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it's very beautiful. I like the silhouettes and the perfect profile of the woman. Good job!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Si, par hasard
    Sur l'Pont des Arts
    Tu croises le vent, le vent fripon
    Prudenc', prends garde à ton jupon

    Brassens, Le Vent

    ReplyDelete
  4. Paris = the City of Lights, and this one is just perfect! Eric, you never disappoint. Just lovely. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is a great shot Eric. It picks up exactly the feeling one would have there at this time of day. Maybe easy for you, but not for most of us!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
    Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
    In numerous leafage bosomed close;
    Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
    Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
    On cloudy archipelagos.

    Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
    Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
    Their unimagined shapes accord:
    Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
    As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
    A sudden elemental sword.

    The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
    And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
    The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
    Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
    Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
    Great moveless meres of radiance.

    Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
    Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
    A triple row of pointed teeth?
    Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
    The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
    With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

    Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
    Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
    Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
    Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
    Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
    When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

    These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows,
    Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
    Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,-
    'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
    As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
    His dreadful and resounding arms!

    All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
    Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
    Into the furnace stirred to fume,
    Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
    Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
    The vaporous and inflamèd spaume.

    O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
    In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
    With love that has not speech for need!
    Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
    If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
    Fantasy them starre brede.

    A Sunset { from 'Feuilles d'Automne'} ~ Victor Hugo

    This image is... just beautiful, Eric. Merci bien!

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Monica. "You know how to please us. We´re easy!" LOOOOOOL. No I'm sure you're not!

    @Petrea "How nice of this couple to pose for you! " Yeah, right LOL!

    @Joanna. merci ;-)

    @Anonymous. Love the Brassens bit, thank you.

    @Christie. Merci beaucoup.

    @Bettina. You should be here, the weather is so nice, it's unbelievable.

    @After fifty (how much after?) Merci.

    @Anonymous. "A Sunset { from 'Feuilles d'Automne'} ~ Victor Hugo" Victor Hugo in English. I never knew such thing existed. It's sounds as fantastic as in French actually.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yes, nice shot, but:
    Looks like romance, but the guy is taking a photo of the sunset, but NO, at this romantic spot with a beautiful woman the dolt is talking on his cell phone! Pay attention to this precious moment with this attractive woman!

    I guess if a French person's face is a silhouette, you don't need to blur it in PS. That would have destroyed this graphic image.
    Happy Thanksgiving for us in the United States.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Very efficiently written post. It will be useful to anybody who usess it, including me. Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to read more posts.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Now we know who the sensible one is here. Great post!

    ReplyDelete