I decided I wanted some quiet instead of the noise and activity in the center of town, so I walked to the municipal graveyard, a huge affair with very closely spaced plots.

There were a larger number of people than I was expecting for a work-day out tending their family plots, adding flowerpots, watering the flowers already there, raking the gravel level, and other work.

For the photos I’ve posted here, there are color and a black-and-white versions. I’m up in the air on some of them as to which makes the better picture.

One of the first sights I encountered was one of several areas they have with arrays of the dead from World War I (click on any photo for a larger image in a new window):

Another plot nearby had another World War I fatality, someone who had been decorated for their service (the engravings of the medals are dimly visible in the circle of the horn scribed in the marble):

There were some rather large monuments and crypts present as well. Here is the top of one:

This is the same dome, but zoomed in on the cross at the cap of the dome:

This is the interior of the domed monument that you can see above. I liked how the iron gate mirrored the marble cross inside the monument:

Some monuments were literally dissolving. I was not able to get a photo of one of them that looked to be centuries old and resembled in no small part the 13th century church close to my apartment. I plan to return to photograph it.

Other, more recent plots also were in ruins:

There was one plot against one of the exterior walls of the graveyard that had no marble headstones, but instead had metal nameplates scattered around on the ground:

Finally, a slightly more contemporary monument had in addition to a bronze relief of the deceased in the black marble back, a full statue beneath a black marble roof:

It was actually a very well done statue. I need to see if it is a copy of a more famous work, or if it is an original. I wouldn’t mind having a copy of it.

I have a few more photos, but these should be sufficient to tax those on dial-up for now.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photography, photos, photos of Europe, pictures

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Last Saturday I took a walk around Grenoble with my camera. Here are a few photos (click on any image to see a larger version).

This is from the square that is near my apartment. The building is the old Palais de Justice for Grenoble. I’m not sure how old the building is, but it dates back to at least the Renaissance. I liked the way the shadows fell on the complex carved stone.

I found this sign amusing. It reminded me of the Church Lady skits on the old Saturday Night Live (strangely relevant now given that appellation has been pinned to Harriet Miers). The caption for this photo - “Could it be… Satan?!?!”

I haven’t been able to adjust the contrast on this photo to my satisfaction yet, but I liked the juxtaposition of a city street and the buildings lining it framing a view of a centuries old fortification wall.

The cliff between the (relatively) new building below and the fort above caught my eye.

Another contrast, the 13th century church steeple against the architectural monstrosities of some 1960s vintage apartment buildings.

Apparently, for some in town, Saturday is wash day.

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This past Sunday, I strolled around the center of Grenoble taking photos. Here are a two that show the river that is the heart of the town (if not the geographic center, the first has my apartment building in it, although it is in the distance):

(click on any image for a larger photo in a separate window)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I ran into a brocante, which is a sort of giant flea market/garage sale, where I bought a portfolio of old prints (a few are posted here). Below is a photo that gives an indication of what the brocante looks like:

Here are two “artsy” photos, the second of which is one of my attempts to turn digital color photos into black and white images. Strangely, I find it easier to work with black and white film than I do with color digital images that I use software to convert to black and white. Perhaps I should consider using the black and white option on my camera.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

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Never let it be said there are no Frenchmen with senses of humor:

(From a marking on the side of a bridge showing the pedestrian walkway, click on the thumbnail for a larger image)

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Popularity: 49% [?]

Some from today, some from earlier.

Perhaps I should start a new category.

The first is a black-and-white version of a photo I posted earlier. I’m still not entirely happy with how it turned out, even after a lot of work in Photoshop, but here it is (as is usual, click on the thumbnail for a larger photo to pop up):

I have been posting the photos of a few ads that I felt would never appear on street side displays in the US, here are two more.

The first is for the ladies to appreciate, the caption says, in a literal translation, “Lesson 1: To fly him the star,” but I think it means in English, “Lesson 1: Fly him to the stars.”

For the men to appreciate, here is the female version of the advertisement, with the caption (much easier for me to translate), “Lesson 67: Succumb to temptation.”

I think I need to take the photos of the roadside advertisements at night to avoid the reflections, despite the inadvertent art that can sometimes result.

I have many more photos taken especially this Sunday when I was out searching for good images. I will post more later.

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Here are two photos I’ve been meaning to post. The first is part of a set that I’ll post in entirety one day soon. It is another streetside ad that I found intriguing (and unlikely to be seen on the side of a street in the US):

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image)

The second is of the 13th century church within about 100 yards of my apartment. One of my co-workers has suggested those of us interested in photography go out and take photos on a certain subject and then get together and compare. The subject he chose was “the nature of the city” (translated from French) with the word he used for “nature” meaning “natural world”, not nature as in characteristics or tendencies. I’m interested in finding out if the nature I saw is visible to others:

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image)

I was planning on converting the above photo to black-and-white (and may still do so), but I was not satisfied with the initial results after the conversion. I’m still working on tweaking other photos to post, perhaps I’ll have a few more ready this weekend.

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…a photograph is completely inadequate to capture a sight. Somehow the filtering of a mind is needed to convey everything associated with what is seen from a particular vantage point, even when the influences of sound and smell are removed and the image alone is all that the mind focuses upon.

This inadequacy applies for a sight from my recent visit to Lyon, where the sight of an illuminated fountain/artificial waterfall on the hill below a prominent. also illuminated church thanking the Virgin Mary for her divine intervention in saving the city from an epidemic combined to make a striking image that I could not capture in a camera.

Below is my attempt (click on the image for a larger photo):

No matter how sophisticated the equipment, no matter how much you play with the image in the software, sometimes the view created within and by the mind with its own eloquent “software” cannot be conveyed.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, Lyon, photos, photos of Europe, photos of Lyon, photography

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As always, click on the thumbnail to get a larger image.

Here is another angle of the church where the sunlight was shining through the stained glass windows:

In older times (pre-indoor plumbing), the small courtyards between the buildings had wells that the inhabitants used for their water. I had a photo showing one of the courtyards in the last post of photos. Here is one of the remaining wells, but it is filled in now:

In the last post of photos, I also mentioned the poetically named escalier escargot, or “snail stairs”. I had a photo of the exterior of one of these staircases. Here is a photo I took through a window that shows the spiral staircase from below:

Lyon was a major regional capitol in the Roman Empire, and there are ruins of two ampitheaters which have been refurbished and are used for concerts. This is from the upper levels, where it has not been refurbished:

Here is another photo of the two churches that I posted the other day. In this photo, I was trying to get the silhouette of the cross that was at the peak of one of the towers on the lower church against the lighted upper church. The composition isn’t as successful as I had hoped, perhaps after some cropping (which I’ll do later):

I have more photos that I may post once I’ve finished cleaning them up.

Technorati Tags: France, letters from Europe, Lyon, photos, photos of Europe, photos of Lyon

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One of the many things I find interesting in France (this may true of other countries in Europe, but I have the most experience with France) is the number of large churches and cathedrals in most cities, and even in many of the towns. For example, during my visit to Lyon this past weekend, I saw how there were two large churches (they could reasonably be called cathedrals) within sight of each other.

Here is the best photo I took of them (late in the evening, after dinner):

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image, email me if you are interested in seeing the full resolution photo)

The upper church is fairly recent (late 19th century, I believe), built in commemoration of the Virgin Mary saving Lyon from an outbreak of cholera (I need to research the details, sorry for the incomplete story). I have no details on the lower church, other than it is much less ornate inside, but has its own features of interest.

Here is a photo taken inside the lower church, during the afternoon. I have some other images of the interesting light cast through the stained glass windows, but the photos need some serious cleaning up before posting.

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image, email me if you are interested in seeing the full resolution photo)

Somehow, though, the very old, 13th century churches of Brugges (an old town in Belgium, once called “the Venice of the North”) hold more fascination for me, even though they are much rougher in appearance both inside and outside.

One of the other very interesting things about Lyon is the passages between buildings in the oldest quarters of town. The crazy-quilt pattern of building in the eras immediately before the Renaissance created a maze not only of streets, but of passageways that led both between streets and to small courtyards between the various buildings. The passageways were used by the Resistance against the Nazis during the occupation of France in the Second World War to avoid capture by the Gestapo. Again, I need to do some more research, but I believe the Gestapo had a major headquarters in Lyon to suppress the Partisans.

Here is a photo of one of the courtyards, showing one of the spiral staircases typical of the architecture of the region. Somewhat poetically they are called escalier escargot, the literal translation is “snail stairs”, with the spiral of the snail shell making reference to the spiral structure you can see in the arches in this photo. I haven’t had time to properly adjust the contrast of this photo yet, and I neglected to put on the polarizing filter before I took the shot, so it is not as nice a picture as I would prefer. It does not do the sight justice.

(again, click on the thumbnail for a larger image, email me if you are interested in seeing the full resolution photo)

I’ll try to post more photos later, once I’ve had time to make the images look a bit better.

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Although because of the narrow street I wasn’t able to get a good photo of it to truly do the sight justice, it seems that at least one restauranteur in Lyon has a good sense of humor:

Savage cuisine at the Pirate Restaurant…

Interesting. I like the crossed fork and knife.

By the way, the building you see there is at least 400 years old… which means it was 200 years old when the romanticized age of piracy reigned in the Caribbean.

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