Couple floating and couple walking
- 📍 Location: Quais de Seine, Paris, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
Two people walking the lower quay of the Seine towards the Louvre, framed under a bridge arch, with the long wall of the embankment running diagonally out of the foreground and the river flat beside it. The couple are tiny, far away and exactly on the line where the wall meets the light.
The arch does the framing, the wall does the leading, and the exposure does the rest. I metered for the far end of the quay and let the underside of the bridge go to solid black, which turns the opening into a proscenium: the lit strip is a stage and the two figures have walked onto it.
Black and white removes the only thing that would have distracted here, which is the green of the river. What remains is a study in three values, the black of the vault, the mid grey of the stone, and the white of the sky at the end.
The lower quays are one of the few places in central Paris where you can walk for a kilometre without crossing a road. Everyone who uses them walks more slowly than they do upstairs.
I wanted a photograph of two people made small by a city and entirely unbothered by it.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
