I imagined only a few must-have images before going to Paris. This is one of them. I’ve always been fascinated by the Glass Pyramid designed by architect I.M. Pei at the center of the Louvre. I especially wanted a picture at night during Blue Hour, my favorite time to make urban landscapes.

Not having a tripod, I shot everything handheld, leaning heavily on the Fujifilm 16-80mm f4’s in-lens image stabilization. I’ve been impressed with its stability, and I was successful shooting at 1/2 to 1/4 of a second. Ironically, the last photograph, with the longest focal length of 54mm equivalent, was shot at the slowest shutter speed of 0.3 seconds.

As a result, the ISO ranged from 320 to 640, which is acceptable. The base ISO would’ve been ideal, but I only had an f4 lens, so I’m happy with the technical results and the photos I created.

I don’t recall if I shot these two images from the same place. The first picture is at a 24mm equivalent, showing the pyramid in relation to the Louvre’s surrounding stone structure. The next image is at 53.7mm to capture the entire pyramid at the highest level of detail.

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