How Does She Feel ?

Our Lady of Paris has seen a few things in her time, including the recent controversial renaming of her 'Parvis de Notre-Dame' (Notre-Dame place) into 'Place Jean-Paul II'.

But whether it shall one day be re-renamed Square Ségolène or Clos Sarko remains to be seen, as she presides regally over the French presidential elections for 2007 as I type.

The shot was taken a week ago with a lovely big fat moon creeping round the corner as we sat on one of the stone benches from which you can admire the newly sparkling edifice.

The funny thing about the moon is that it appears much larger when it is near the horizon than when it is high in the sky where it resembles a pinprick! But this is an optical illusion. And often when you try to take a nice shot of a skyscape with that big fat lovely moon in it, with a wide-angle lense of course to capture the full magesty of the moment, the moon does indeed appear on the shot as a little speck of dust (or maybe a pixel or two!) that you probably try to scratch off with a fingernail!

The trick is to use your zoom lens at maximum zoom, and put the moon next to some earthly feature such as a tree or a building which is also quite a long way away from you. In this way you reduce the size difference between the two elements (worldly and extraterrestrial), thereby rendering the satelite relatively bigger and more impressive. Same goes for sunsets actually.

Try it out and let me know if it works!