How to photograph the Arc De Triomphe in Paris, France
Paris is many things and one of them is that it’s the world’s most visited by tourists city. If you are one of those lucky people, here is what to expect when trying to photograph one of French capital’s many recognisable symbols — the Arc De Triomphe.
There are many different angles and directions you can shoot this huge monument. Here’s my winner shot from this location and how and why I did it.
There are two things that you need to know about the Arc De Triomphe before shooting it. First: it’s crowded most of the time. If you go for a morning shot or outside of the tourist season this will not be an issue, but otherwise prepare to work between lots of tourist, many of whom are trying to take a photo with their phones and don’t really care if they are standing right before you. That’s annoying, but it’s not such a huge problem, because, the second thing is that it’s enormous. The monument is so big, that you can shoot it from far away and the people and vehicles around it don’t really matter.
Here’s a map of the region with some hot points on it.
When I first went there I positioned my tripod (of course you need one for a sunset shot) on the first crosswalk of the Champs Elysees, marked with point 2, so that nothing would stand between me and my object. Wrong! Indian tourist don’t care that I’m trying to photograph. Not only they did selfies before me, some of them even asked me to take their photos. Yeah, right…
So to make my shot I decided to move to the second crosswalk — point 1 on the map. But from there I faced another problem. A huge streetlight. Nothing I can’t fix in post processing.
Actually, the more far away you go from the monument the better it looks, so it was a good decision. Longer focal lengths work better for gigantic monuments.
Still, if you have wide angle lens and decide to shoot from a closer distance without tourists in front of you can try shooting from the other not so crowded side, marked with point 4 on the map.
As you can see weather was nice, but there wasn’t any clouds, which makes the photos quite boring. What can you do about it. Maybe you’ll have more luck.
My girlfriend Mary was also with me in Paris, but she chose to photograph from the side and went to point 3.
Here are some more photographs I took on this trip to Paris. Follow me on Instagram and 500px for more pics. Thank you for reading!
