We'll always have Paris

We'll always have Paris.... and the rest of France. Here are a number of examples from Hennie Schaper's portfolio on this theme, with his own descriptions (click on the images to see them in his Flickr site). Comments are by the photographer, clicking the images will lead you to the corresponding Flickr page. The link for the theme photograph of the Notre Dame above can be found here.

This wonderful scene of a granddaughter and grandfather at the banks of the Seine is a personal favourite. A timeless feeling helped by the black-and-white conversion, and good framing with the tree branch at the top.

The Paris Metro, the best way to get around of course. I love the way the lines converge in the vanishing point.

Any time you sit down on a French terrace (in this case Rouen), there will be pretty girls sitting a few tables further. The trick is to capture them from this close without them noticing it, to maintain that unposed feeling that makes candids so attractive. This is one of the best results I have obtained so far.

I would love to take full credit for this one, saying that I carefully planned it with just the right camera setting to get this dreamy out-of-focus effect. But I won't. It was a happy mistake: not every technical failure is an artistic failure...

Bumping into someone else's model shoot always gives great opportunities to capture a model from a totally unique angle. In combination with the early autumn leaves scattered around, I love this shot that I took in the Luxembourg Park. One of my all-time favourites.

The first of two silhouette shots taken shortly after one another in Blois, while walking back from the Loire river to the town. I love them equally, and they are still sufficiently different to include them both.

And here we have the second one. Different location in Blois, different people, different birds....

When I started photographing (beyond holiday shots) in 2007, I would have deleted this shot as a failure. Now I love it - never mind that it was an accident that the girl in front walked into the shot as I took it. This was taken at the Paris Pont des Arts near the Louvre.

We lived in Rouen from 2002 until 2004, and we visited the town once more in 2009. The cathedral, famous for the Monet paintings, is still worthwhile, but when I took this snapshot I did not expect the responses to be so positive - it even reached Explore.

This was taken in the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, a perfect example of using the frame-within-a-frame composition technique. I also use this for the header of my main blog Art for Art's Sake.