Thanks to my travels and interests in urbanism, whenever
I'm in another city, I always try and shoot some photos of their metro
stations. But not all systems are created equal as both their physical layout
and station design help determine how photographically interesting they are. Which
means that the Parisian Metro system is easily my favorite system to shoot.
Most important to me - from a photographic standpoint -
is the arrangement of the platforms. Island style platforms - with the
platforms in the middle of the tracks - are suboptimal as even with a wide
lens, you can't really capture platform. Far better are platforms on either
side of the tracks, allowing you to shoot across the right-of-way to the far
side (elevated island style platforms - ala the CTA - at least allow for shots
of the surrounding city. Underground island platforms are almost
photographically useless).
The Parisian Metro system (usually) combines platforms
outside of the right-of-way with classic station architecture. And they're even
well lit. To top it off, with train headways of only a couple of minutes, it's
too easy to simply skip a train to wait for the opposite platform to clear out.
Here's a few examples:
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