Smashing Pumpkins, Carte de Sejour & Roland Garros

It's French Open Tennis at Roland Garros time in Paris. It's a wonderful event ... except when it rains. After only one hour of pseudo-sunshine, the heavens opened up and it rained for about 6 hours. I got to photograph Serena William's opening round match against a young Bulgarian with a high Scrabble-value name of Tsvetana Pironkova.


Today was Day 1 of 15 of Roland Garros so expect images and hopefully stories to come, but for now you can see some of my images from today here:

Roland Garros - Day 1

Keeping with the tennis theme, Roger Federer came to Paris early and I got to shoot a semi-private photo session with him at a fancy hotel near the Champs Elysees. The guy is not only nice and the best tennis player on the planet but he spent an hour answering reporter's questions alternating between perfectly fluent English, French and German. Impressive.


This week I walked past Notre Dame to the main administrative building in Paris on the Ile de la Cite. It's called the Prefecture de Police and any foreigner here has spent many, many hours there dealing with immigration-related headaches. But this was a good trip there because I went to go pick up my 5th carte de sejour, my annual long-stay visa for France. It's a pretty comical administrative process as witnessed by my annual renewal ritual which goes something like this: (1) I send in the required papers (2) I wait 2 months for their response which will invariably point out that one of the documents I sent them is insufficient (3) I wait a couple of weeks (4) I send them the exact same documents I sent the first time (5) I wait 2 more months (6) I go pick up my carte de sejour. After 5 years I almost look forward to my annual dance with the French adminstration.

A big musical event in Paris this week was the first stop of the reunion tour of the Smashing Pumpkins. They haven't played together in over 7 years so their fans turned out in huge numbers to see them play at the Grand Rex Theatre. Only a couple of original band members are still with the band but Billy Corgan really doesn't need anyone else with him on stage - great energy.


And now a couple of photos from the week ...


A protest against Sarkozy's proposed new Big Brother sounding Ministry of Immigration and National Identity


What happens to a cat's eyes when he looks at the camera flash

Sorry, another week without a blog entry ... I'll be back next week

No Post This Week ...

The Election, Atelier Maitre Albert & Roger Waters

It's done ... the Nicolas Sarkozy era has begun in France. It was a close election and, just like in so many countries around the world, the voters were divided almost in half. The vote was approximately 53% for Sarkozy to 47% for Segolene Royal. I hope that the changes Sarkozy has talked about implementing here doesn't cause a total shut down of France. I suspect there will be some pain in the months to come.



This was a pretty slow week. Had the privilege of photographing Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in concert. He was outstanding and put on a great show.

One of the highlights was a giant, inflated pig that floated over the crowd with social and political commentary graffitied on it: "Stop Bush Now", "What an asshole Dick Cheney", "Habeus Corpus matters", "religion divides", etc.

(This is not my image; I borrowed it from another photographer)

You can see some of my images from the concert here:

Roger Waters in Concert

Went for a special occasion dining experience at one of 3-star Michelin chef Guy Savoy's lower level restaurants, just across from my apartment. The food was tasty and the place had good ambience but was a bit more basic than I expected. The restaurant is called Atelier Maitre Albert and is usually filled with many visiting Americans.


And now a couple of photos from the week ...


A flashing sign that gives passers-by the most updated price of fois gras


A small store built into the side of a stone church

Inside joke