Roughness to smoothness – Yoga in the business district

As part of the Urban Yoga in Paris project that I have been doing with Claire for a few weeks, we had the opportunity to take some pictures on “La Défense” located on the west side of Paris. We settled in the business district on a holiday in November 2017.

I had previously published some photos of Yoga on the side of “Le Moretti” , as well as others on the side of the esplanade taken the same day. I voluntarily left these serie of pictures obecause Claire and I had chosen to come to the defense for the big arch. So I decided to leave for a unic post.

The choice was made in order to bring some warmth to the coldness of the marble. Bring grace to these rigid walls, curves at these right angles, a little bit of life and colors.

In a setting that symbolizes a society that keeps pressing us, to format us, to try to get us into molds designed to get the maximum performance from everyone, Claire and I have tried to take it from roughness to smoothness.

Quadrimetry

A jump into the fourth dimension this quadrimetry picture wasn’t expected like this. Quadrimetry, ah yes, I’m just dropping a word like that on the net. I don’t even know if it’s existing. I’m a bit influenced by sci-fi and I really like symmetric things (maybe my engineering background). I’ve never tried to play with photo manipulation like that. Especially that I just use color, light and temperature balance, cropping, contrast and small, simple tools to retouch the pictures I take.

Yesterday, I went to the area of  “La Defense” (west of Paris) for a photo session about Yoga (the post will come soon). I’ve made this picture just between two shots. It knew what I wanted to take but I didn’t know the result. It’s always been like this on my photographs. I know what I want to take I don’t know what the result will look like.

I’m always keeping my both eyes open when I’m doing photography. To know what is happening around. It’s really useful when you do street photography. Even if here it wasn’t about street photography I took the habit to shoot like this, with both eyes open. The second point and advantage is to keep an eye on your stuff while you work.

The way back home

Anyone will see what he wants to see in this picture. This is why I like photography. There’s a moment after a photo session that I’d like to talk about. It’s when you just finished your day or your assignment. On the way back home, you’re exhausted by the excitement of capturing moments taking care to not lose the memory cards and thinking about what you just shot and especially about two or three pictures. Because you know that they are good! One friend compared that moment to “mushroom foraging”, you’re tired, excited to arrive home to taste the mushrooms. I’m talking about normal mushrooms, the one you cook….

The four steps of my photographs

Once you arrive home, you sit down in front of your computer, slide the cards inside the card reader start the transfer, prepare some coffee and wait, think, a deep breath while the process bar is getting full.  Then the second part is starting, the hardest one.

As I said this picture was not expected to be edited like this. As most of my photographs I don’t know the exact result that I’ll have before or even after I took it. But what I noticed is that there’s always four steps in my photography.

First, the moment when you think about it. It’s always blurry, I just know when, where with whom.

The second step is to shoot it after trying and trying different angles, lenses and lights you have it, but still you know it’s going to be that one but how it will look like I never knew.

So comes the third step, the editing part when you need to try and to explore the picture to get used to it to like it love it (or to hate it and drop it) or to wait until the day it reaches her maturity like a fruit ! Then you’re almost done.

The last, fourth and final step, is submitting, publishing it, writing about it and sharing it somewhere virtually or just showing it to someone see the reaction. Let the people see through your eyes.