La Tour Eiffel

The Scene:

 

Of course, the Eiffel Tower needs no introduction. It has become the symbol of both Paris and France. So I will stick to giving some trivia rather than just dwelling into the mundane statistics.

 

The tower was much criticized by the public when it was built, with many calling it an eyesore. Newspapers of the day were filled with angry letters from the arts community of Paris. One is quoted extensively in William Watson's US Government Printing Office publication of 1892 Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture: "And during twenty years we shall see, stretching over the entire city, still thrilling with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see stretching out like a black blot the odious shadow of the odious column built up of riveted iron plates." Signers of this letter included Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Charles Gounod, Charles Garnier, Jean-Léon Gérôme, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Alexandre Dumas.

 

Contrary to popular belief, this was not originally built as a transmission tower. The structure was built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch for the Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution.

 

One of the great Hollywood movie clichés is that the view from a Parisian window always includes the tower. In reality, since zoning restrictions limit the height of most buildings in Paris to 7 stories, only a very few of the taller buildings have a clear view of the tower.

 

Eiffel had a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years; it was to be dismantled in 1909, when its ownership would revert to the City of Paris. The City had planned to tear it down (part of the original contest rules for designing a tower was that it could be easily demolished) but as the tower proved valuable for communication purposes, it was allowed to remain after the expiry of the permit. The military used it to dispatch Parisian taxis to the front line during the First Battle of the Marne.

 

In order to maintain a uniform appearance to an observer on the ground, three separate colours of paint are used on the tower, with the darkest on the bottom and the lightest at the top.  The tower needs repainting every seven years, and it hasn’t always been brown / bronze. The tower is currently painted a shade of bronze. For a brief spell in 1899, the tower was painted ochre yellow. And from 1954 to 1961, it was brownish red, a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge. On the first floor there are interactive consoles hosting a poll for the colour to use for a future session of painting.

 

The Eiffel Tower was the tallest building in the world for 41 years until the construction of the Chrysler Building in 1930.

 

The Story:

If you could spend only one night in Paris around the blue hour and you want to photograph something that best describes the city to you what would you do? No brainer, right?

 

But the tougher decision was where do I go to look at the tower as I have only one shot at it. Actually many “shots” but at one go. There were quite a few options that I was thinking about. The first was Tour Montparnasse, the 56 floor office building which claims to offer incredible views. But I assumed with the unjustifiable amount of advertising all around Paris for it, it should be extremely crowded or should be crappy in what they offer. (It turns out I was right, from the reviews online, their open terrace is invariably closed and one floor down has glass windows). The second option was to go to the green gardens of Champ de Mars. But then, I was a little concerned, if I could get the tower in its entirety from ground level without tilting and creating weird distortions. So I needed a platform at an altitude.

 

Cometh Palais de chaillot. Located on a hill right across the Seine from the Eifell Tower, this is – as Ravi Shastri would say – just what the doctor ordered!

 

The foreground of the picture, the marvelous fountains and the main pool is the Jardins du Trocadéro. The main feature, called the Fountain of Warsaw, is a long basin, or water mirror, with twelve fountain creating columns of water 12 meters high; twenty four smaller fountains four meters high; and ten arches of water. At one end, facing the Seine, were twenty powerful water cannon, able to project a jet of water fifty meters. Above the long basin were two smaller basins, linked with the lower basin by cascades flanked by 32 sprays of water four meters high.

 

Once I zeroed on a standing space enough to put my tripod in, all I had to do was wait for about 30 minutes or so for the sun to go down and get what I wanted.

 

The Shot:

 

ISO 100 | Canon 10-22 mm @ 18mm | f/16 | 13 sec