Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris.

Gear: Nikon D600 || Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 || Youngnuo MC-36 || Slik Pro 340DX
Setting: 80mm|| f/8 || 3-exposure blend || ISO 100
Post: Photoshop CS6 || Lightroom 5 || Wacom Intuos Pro

Notre-Dame de Paris is probably my most frequently visit place in Paris, it plays a very important role in French culture and history so I really want to capture a nice photograph of it. For that, I had been scouting for good locations near Notre-Dame for a while.

The year of 2013 is the 850th anniversary of Notre-Dame, the authority built a 3-story high deck right in front of it so the tourists could had a better view of the architectural detail of its facade.  

Their intention was good, but this also means the perspective of photographing the facade is greatly limited my the deck. So I turned to another location -Pont de la Tournelle, where the photo above was taken. Although the famous twin-tower of Notre-Dame can't be seen from here, but I get to use Notre-Dame as foreground and the sunset as background.

Now that I've found the location I want, all I need now is a great weather to complete the puzzle. The summer of 2013 is mostly cloudless, sunny days that make the photo rather dull. I waited until Autumn for the cloud to appear. The day I took this shot was actually too cloudy (it even drizzled sometimes), but then I discovered that the cloud did't stretch all the way to the horizon so it's still possible to capture the reflection of the final sunlight on the cloud.

When the position of the sun was finally below the cloud's, the golden ray started to project on the cloud. The reflection turned from gold to orange and then red as the sun went down. 

As a matter of fact, the transformation was too magnificent that the cloud itself will become the focus of the photo, instead of Notre Dame, so my final choice is the one above, fully lit cathedral and the cloud with slight glow of red.

Gear: Nikon D600 || Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 
Setting:80mm|| f/4.5 || 1/60s || ISO 6400
Post:Photoshop CC || Lightroom 5 || Wacom Intuos Pro || Macbook Pro 15" 2013 Late

The altar of Notre-Dame de Paris in this picture may look like an ordinary place to hold religious events, but this very same spot is where Napoléon I crowned himself and his wife 210 years ago! (1804/12/02)

Compare to other churches in Paris, it's pretty dark inside Notre-Dame. That means it's a very challenging environment for cameras, using cameras that can deliver clean images under higher ISO setting will make the post processing a lot easier.