Blog 21 06 04 Eiffel StormEiffel Storm

I see the Eiffel tower every day that I leave home and have photographed it in a myriad of lighting and weather situations. I am still hoping one day to capture a lightning strike on it, but the lighting on the day that I captured this image was still quite dramatic.

Given the ubiquity of images of this most iconic of structures, I am most often focussed on finding angles on it that are interesting and uncommon, but I also enjoy seeing and capturing the weather effects which frequently dramatically impact it, particularly at sunset. This occasion was a mixture of sunset and bad weather which seemed to threaten the tower with an operatic, “Twilight of the Gods” storm.

Clearly the tower has demonstrated the robustness of its creator’s design and war, weather and mass tourism have all failed to do it any substantial damage. Long may it continue to make us gasp with delight, as it nightly sparkles and glitters on the hour, until  the final amazing show at 1 am.

Technical

Given the long focal length capture of a distant object and using the camera hand-held, I maxed out the shutter speed to avoid poor focus due to shake.

The lighting was difficult, particularly with extremes of tones, and changing quickly, so I also used much more negative exposure compensation than is usual for me. Equally, I used “spot” exposure management to ensure that the camera did not average out the exposure calculation.

The high speed and narrow aperture might have made for a poor exposure, given the relatively low ISO, except for the fact that the sky scene was very bright in patches and I was specifically aiming for a dramatic silhouette effect.

Settings

Camera: Nikon D300

Lens: Nikon 70-300mm f4/5.6

Focal Length: 250mm

Drive Mode: Single shot

Auto Focus-Area Mode: Single

Aperture: f/13

Shutter Speed: 1/8000s

Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority A/E

Exposure Compensation: -2.3 EV

Metering: Spot

ISO Sensitivity: 500

Hand Held

Format: Raw

Place : 7^th Arrondissement, Paris.

Year: 2011

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