PARIS // Street snaps

One of the things I miss about Paris is how pretty everything is there. The buildings are gorgeous. The gardens are incredible, especially in the spring. The metro is always full of interesting characters. There is always something to do, yet there is still time for relaxation. You are surrounded by history genuinely everywhere you look. From the Eiffel Tower (which was never intended to be a permanent structure!) to Napoleon's tomb to the most obscure pieces in the Louvre, from Notre Dame Church (the construction of which began in 1163) to Luxembourg Gardens, everything is so much older than most of what we are used to in the United States. There isn't really such a thing as "new construction" in Paris; most buildings look the same, and they're all beautifully old. 

This is thanks mainly to Georges-Eugène Haussmann's renovation of Paris beginning in 1853. This project, which continued until 1927, well after Haussmann was dead, revitalized the center of Paris. He widened avenues, added fountains, sewers and parks, demolished ancient and unsafe buildings and put new ones in their place, redesigned the Etoile area around the Arc de Triomphe (including the Champs-Élysées) and created an entire network of avenues and boulevards that made Paris easier to navigate. His projects, initially commissioned by Napoleon III, fell under a decent amount of criticism, but they did create the Paris we know today. Haussmann architecture is very distinctive; I can look at a picture on Pinterest and recognize right away that it's a photo of Paris.

I found photographing Paris to be incredibly easy. The hardest part might be avoiding the glares from the Parisians rushing by, but after a few minutes you get used to it. After that, you can spend all day photographing; there's so much to see. I couldn't put a number on how many photos I took for the five months I lived abroad, but the fact that I took nearly 1,000 in a day at Versailles tells me the number is pretty high. Below are a few of my favorite "street snaps" from the prettiest city I've ever been to.