Photos From Paris

Well this post has been a long time coming.  Today I took a forced day off from touring.  Of course a strong dose of a stuffy head, runny nose, and crappy outlook has made this a mandatory affair.  Gayle and I have had a great deal of fun with our Meetup.com activities. It's a worldwide organization that put people with similar interests together.  Naturally, I signed up for all the photographic Meetups. I even accidentally signed up for the Makeup Lovers Meetup group.  I really just wanted to know who they were.  Are these scorned lovers,  people desperate to get over that last love,  who are they?  Well they are men and woman who love makeup.  They have nail sessions, getting your eyes right, lips that demand to be kissed.  After a number of offers for a group meetup, I kindly unsubscribed to it.

The photo group has been very interesting.  It's about 40% women, which to me seems pretty high on the woman ratio.  All different ages, 70's to 30's, over half are French but many are expats and some are from Morocco, Israel, and England to name a few.  One outgoing gal is half French and half English and when she speaks she slips languages like a shoe model changes shoes. At the end of our last group meeting, she started wrapping up her Guinness beer stein.  She said she was going to kip the glass as it was really nice and they get them for free.  One aha moment is going on a photo shoot and looking at everyone's photos after the shoot.  Holy crap, there are some really talented photographers in the group and were not just talking about the photos themselves.  It often about the composition and what they say.

Last Saturday we meet at 6:30am on the Trocadéro which is a small park and structure opposite the Eiffel tower.  Our goal was to see the blue and golden light of the dawn as it hit the tower.  To me, it wasn't really a remarkable morning but later some of the images that people shot were amazing.  There was one real find. There was a professional photographer with two model having a photo shoot. The gals were using this silk wrap to simulate a butterfly.   It must have been 50 degrees and as far as I can tell that was all these gals were wearing.  I got some candid photos of the shoot.  Then a guy drives up in a classic car probably for another photo shoot later in the day.  So we got great photos of the tower with the car in the foreground.  I told SylHo our tour leader that he was the best.  "He said yes I am the king of tours!"  I countered with he was "the emperor of tours!"

Below are some images taken by members of the photo Meetup at two different events.  I am so impressed.