Champs-Élysées in Daylight

This is a picture of the avenue des Champs-Élysées in daylight. This photograph was taken at the same spot as my main photograph, albeit with a different lens (and camera).

The large white arch in the distance is the Arc de Triomphe (the same structure that you see illuminated in my nighttime photo). It seems smaller here than in the nighttime photo because I used a shorter lens for this photo; as it is, it looks even more distant in real life, since it is almost a kilometer away. The Arc is on a low hill, so you can’t really see anything behind it from this point on the avenue; beyond it, though, is the avenue de la Grande Armée and La Défense, the very chic, very modern business suburb just outside the Paris city limit; the suburb is aligned precisely with the axis of the Champs-Élysées. If you look very closely at the bottom of the opening in the Arc, you can just barely see a dark horizontal bar: that’s the shadow of the Grande Arche, a huge, concrete-and-steel, open cube, also at La Défense, that complements the Arc de Triomphe and its little sister, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which is just west of the Louvre.

The large trees on either side of the avenue conceal the many buildings and the very wide sidewalks crowded with people (mostly tourists) that run up either side of the street.

This picture was taken on an extremely clear afternoon in August. The complete ensemble of La Défense, the trendy suburb of Neuilly, the avenue de la Grande Armée, the Champs-Élysées, the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries Gardens, and the Louvre (the last three of these are behind the camera in this photo) were visible in person, although only the main drag of the Champs-Élysées is visible here.

The rise in the avenue towards the Arc de Triomphe is not an illusion. The avenue rises towards the Arc, then descends again slightly beyond it, only to rise again at La Défense.

Click directly on the photo to see a larger version (twice the above size). Photographed on August 22, 1999.