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Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral

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Notre Dame Great Organ <br><br> According to the <a href="http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/spip.php?rubrique82">Notre Dame website</a>, the Great Organ has five keyboards, 190 ties and 8,000 pipes; it is the largest organ in France and without a doubt the most famous organ in the world according to the website. The website says that there were organs in the cathedral since it was built in the 12th century. Over the centuries the Great Organ was expanded, restored, and reconstructed before taking on its current proportions in the 18th century. With each renovation, builders tried to keep previous equipment and the current organ still has a few medieval pipes today. <br><br> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_de_Paris">Wikipedia</a> says that 900 pipes are classified as historical. In December 1992, a two-year restoration of the organ was completed that fully computerized the organ under three LANs (Local Area Networks). The organ is used in Sunday services. On Sunday afternoons guest organists from all over the world play recitals on this instrument. The <a href="http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/spip.php?article620">Notre Dame website </a> and <a href="http://mypipeorganhobby.blogspot.com/2008/11/organ-notre-dame-paris.html">My Pipe Organ Hobby</a> have audio clips from the Great Organ.
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Notre Dame Great Organ

According to the Notre Dame website, the Great Organ has five keyboards, 190 ties and 8,000 pipes; it is the largest organ in France and without a doubt the most famous organ in the world according to the website. The website says that there were organs in the cathedral since it was built in the 12th century. Over the centuries the Great Organ was expanded, restored, and reconstructed before taking on its current proportions in the 18th century. With each renovation, builders tried to keep previous equipment and the current organ still has a few medieval pipes today.

Wikipedia says that 900 pipes are classified as historical. In December 1992, a two-year restoration of the organ was completed that fully computerized the organ under three LANs (Local Area Networks). The organ is used in Sunday services. On Sunday afternoons guest organists from all over the world play recitals on this instrument. The Notre Dame website and My Pipe Organ Hobby have audio clips from the Great Organ.

churchcathedralphotoKent Beckernot my day job photographyNotre DameParisFranceorgan

  • Notre Dame de Paris <br><br> Notre Dame de Paris (French for Our Lady of Paris) was at the top of my list of churches while on vacation in Paris in March 2012. I visited the church on two occasions before 8 am to avoid the busloads of people (20,000 people a day according to one source and 2 million over the Christmas season) that visit this tourist favorite. It was a strange feeling being one of the few people in this historic, massive church, measuring 420 ft (128m) with two 226 ft (69m) tall towers with a spire that reaches 295 ft (90m). The style of the church is French Gothic and is the first cathedral built on a large scale. It served as a model for other cathedrals. The first period of construction was from 1163 into 1240. <br><br> The cathedral suffered substantial damage during the French Revolution. To repair the damage and correct previous bad restorations and decorations, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc led a restoration effort that took 20 years to complete. Victor Hugo inspired the restoration through publication of “Notre-Dame de Paris” (English title “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) in 1831. According to www.adoremus.org/1099-Rose.html, Hugo hated the previous restorations and decorations put in place by highly trained architects, accusing them of willful destruction and perversion all in the name of fashion. The restoration returned the cathedral to its original gothic state. For more detail on the history, see <a href="http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/spip.php?article380">the church website</a> and <a href="http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/paris-notre-dame-cathedral">Sacred Destinations</a>. For more photos of Notre Dame and 360 panoramas that will make you dizzy, see <a href="http://mappinggothic.org/building/1164">Mapping Gothic France.</a> <br><br> To capture the enormity of the church, I shot this photo a few inches from the ground with a 10-22mm zoom lens at 10mm (16mm with 1.6X crop factor). I bracketed three frames at 100 ISO. Back home, I used Photomatix to combine the photos in an HDR process. I combined the HDR version with the original properly exposed version in Photoshop Elements and adjusted the opacity slider until I obtained the desired result. As is typical in cathedral shots, I straightened the photo so that the reference points such as lights and windows lined up on both sides using PTLens. <br><br> Unfortunately, Quasimodo is nowhere to be found.
  • Notre Dame Center West Portal <br><br> Standing outside the center of the west portal of Notre Dame, I had a strange feeling that a lot of people were looking at me in judgment. No wonder as this portal depicts the Last Judgment, originally sculpted between 1200 and 1240. Unfortunately many statues, particularly the large jamb statues (the first carved figures a visitor meets on a visit to a Gothic cathedral-traditionally depicting Old Testament prophets or martyred saints), were destroyed in the Revolution. During the major restoration campaign in the mid-1800s, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc restored the portal to its original state by replacing trumeau (a pillar in the center of a Gothic portal) and jamb statues. The trumeau shows Christ teaching. Just above Christ’s head is the lower lintel of the tympanum (a panel above a main portal, or doorway, usually heavily decorated) the Resurrection of the Dead. Here the dead emerge from their tombs at the sound of the angels' trumpets. Just above is the Weighing of Souls by the Archangel Michael, with a furry Devil's interference. To the right are the Dammed and to the left are the Redeemed. Above that in the tympanium is Christ in Majesty. Christ displays his wounds, flanked by angels. The kneeling figures are the Virgin Mary and St. John, who were present at the crucifixion. The right jamb figures features Apostles Paul, James the Great, and Thomas. The left jamb consists of statues of Bartholomew, Simon, and James the Less. Above the right jamb statues are interesting figures of the torments of the damned in hell. For much more detail, see <a href="http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/paris-notre-dame-last-judgment-portal.htm">Sacred Destinations</a> and <a href="http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/spip.php?article409">Norte Dame's website.</a> <br><br> To get a unique perspective of the Portal, I used a wide angle lens with a focal length equivalent of 16mm positioned very close to the Portal, looking up. I did not do much work on the image, simply straightened it out using PTLens and cropped it so the right side matched the left side.
  • Notre Dame Great Organ <br><br> According to the <a href="http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/spip.php?rubrique82">Notre Dame website</a>, the Great Organ has five keyboards, 190 ties and 8,000 pipes; it is the largest organ in France and without a doubt the most famous organ in the world according to the website. The website says that there were organs in the cathedral since it was built in the 12th century. Over the centuries the Great Organ was expanded, restored, and reconstructed before taking on its current proportions in the 18th century. With each renovation, builders tried to keep previous equipment and the current organ still has a few medieval pipes today. <br><br> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_de_Paris">Wikipedia</a> says that 900 pipes are classified as historical. In December 1992, a two-year restoration of the organ was completed that fully computerized the organ under three LANs (Local Area Networks). The organ is used in Sunday services. On Sunday afternoons guest organists from all over the world play recitals on this instrument. The <a href="http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/spip.php?article620">Notre Dame website </a> and <a href="http://mypipeorganhobby.blogspot.com/2008/11/organ-notre-dame-paris.html">My Pipe Organ Hobby</a> have audio clips from the Great Organ.
  • Notre Dame<br /> <br /> I couldn’t find any information on two beautiful small contiguous chapels in the back of the church (see next photo). Can anybody help? I did not employ HDR on this photo; I liked the properly exposed photo but it had one problem-the early morning sun overexposed the stained glass windows. To correct for this, I used the properly exposed print and created a layer mask consisting of the underexposed windows that had more color and detail. Essentially, I cut the windows from the underexposed print and pasted on to the properly exposed version. The final product is very consistent with how it looked when I was there on an early morning in March.
  • Notre Dame<br /> <br /> I couldn’t find any information on two beautiful small contiguous chapels in the back of the church (see next photo). Can anybody help? I did not employ HDR on this photo; I liked the properly exposed print but it had one problem-the early morning sun overexposed the stained glass windows. To correct for this, I used the properly exposed photo and created a layer mask consisting of the underexposed windows that had more color and detail. Essentially, I cut the windows from the underexposed print and pasted on to the properly exposed version. The final product is very consistent with how it looked when I was there on an early morning in March.
  • Notre Dame South Rose Window <br><br> From the <a href="http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/South-Rose-Window">Notre Dame website</a>, the South Rose Window was a gift from King Saint Louis and constructed in 1260 as a counterpoint to the North Rose Window constructed in 1250. It is 42 feet (12.9 meters) in diameter. The window, dedicated to the New Testament, has 84 panes radiating out from a central medallion of Christ. From the Notre Dame website, the rose window has been damaged many times over the centuries. After being propped up since 1543 because the masonry had settled, it was restored between 1725 and 1727. However, the work was poorly executed. The window was severely altered in a fire during the 1830 revolution and had to be rebuilt again in 1861 by Viollet-le-Duc. <br><br> It is difficult to make out specific scenes from the photo, but the website says that the fourth circle consists of around twenty angels carrying a candle, two crowns and a censer, as well as scenes from the Old and New Testaments (in the third and fourth circles) and nine scenes from the life of Saint Matthew, from the last quarter of the 12th century. From the Notre Dame website: “The architect drew inspiration from Chartres Cathedral, placing the four great prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel) carrying the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) on their shoulders, at the centre. This window echoes the reflections of Bertrand, bishop of Chartres in the 13th century, on the connection between the Old and New Testaments: We are all dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. We see more than they do, not because our vision is clearer there or because we are taller, but because we are lifted up due to their giant scale.”
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