This was the final choice (ps click on it to get the whole view). Katie is the only one who won! Good job Katie. And Lauren, I wish this one would have had the puff of smoke, but alas. It did not. And this is the one that fitted what I wanted to write about more. And Cami (ultimate authority) said she liked this one the best. Here is the photo and essay I wrote about it...we'll see if I followed the assignment. Don't make fun of me trying to be artsy and photography-ish and everything.

If I had it my way, I would give you more pictures to put this one in context. But I will do it with words. While walking on the Champs Élysée, I saw a whole line of former soldiers holding English flags and French flags. They were waiting to march up to L'Arc de Triomphe. As I took pictures, I noticed the three men in the left side of the picture, who were relaxed, and simply talking to one another as if they were strolling in their native English countryside. As I looked closer at them, each had medals hanging on their coats. I imagined the heroic acts they had performed in battle, bringing Lady Liberty to victory, just as the relief on L'Arc de Triomphe on the top right. But unlike those timeless soldiers, frozen forever in stone, I was looking at living, breathing soldiers. Old soldiers, yes, but soldiers who were alive. I think sometimes we tend to believe that being a hero, living so that you are remembered forever, so you are immortally more beautiful and perhaps more courageous than you ever were, is the ultimate way to be remembered. I think sometimes we get caught up in trying to be famous, trying to leave our mark on the world; that mark then becomes who we are, our identity. Soldiers, politicians, poets, writers, musicians become something so amazing that we place them above being a human. Instead they are beautifully manipulated stone. It is even more wonderful and beautiful to realize that the people who are heroes and geniuses, who have done all of these great things, really are men and women. The men in this photo have worn faces and crinkly eyes, and the man with a pipe has a cane on his left arm. They are really living and breathing, and worthy, I'm sure, of the honors they receive, because they are the ones who performed those deeds in the past. Not stagnant marble. And now, they stand and are balding, and like to smoke pipes, and find it strange that a twenty year-old girl is taking pictures of them.

I also like the way the bus was stopped as I took this picture, and the ad reinforces this idea of eternally frozen, versus real life. The different ways all of the men in this picture are looking also helps to keep the viewers eye moving. This is the type of picture that the more I look at it, the more I like it, trying to catch something in each of the three pairs of eyes looking toward my camera. The man half cut-off on the left also makes the viewer feel as if they are right on the Champs-Élysée, a part of the crowd, and also peaking into each of the groups of people.