Getting the Shot VII

My last full day in Paris was my day to finally take in some art. The Louvre didn’t really interest me – I didn’t want to stand in lines – and the Musee d’Orsay was closed so that left me with the Pompidou Center. This actually worked out well since I like modern art and I’d thought it was an interesting building ever since I first laid eyes on it in freshman French back in high school. I was traveling light this day since my feet and shoulders had been beaten down over the previous few days – just carrying my point and shoot – but I didn’t think it would be a big deal to not have the heavy gear.

And, to be fair, it wasn’t. The sky was a pretty washed out overcast which would have made it hard to do any sort of outdoor photography anyway and I never really feel that shooting in museums – or at least shooting the art in them – yields anything more than snapshots. Anyway, I had just finished my tour of the galleries and was getting ready to head back outside and knock out a few more chapters from yet another Hemmingway book when I saw this woman standing in front of the window looking – wistfully? thoughtfully? photographically? – out at the Parisian skyline. I grabbed my camera out of my bag and started to quicken my pace to get closer – that camera’s lens maxes out at 60mm – and I was sure she was going to move before I could get into position. It was all I could do not to break out into a run but it seems that I wasn’t the only person who spied this scene. As I got to the shooting point, a women on my right had a step on me and more importantly was right were I wanted to be, one step to my right and squared up on the scene. She had her camera out making basically the same photo and, at the risk the scene might break up, I fired off this shot as a safety shot. It was a good thing I did – within about a second of taking this, the woman turned back to the gallery and moved off.

I put my camera back in my bag, headed outside to the Place Georges Pompidou, cracked open A Moveable Feast, and started to read.