Given that today is the day I make my journey back to the United States (which will make my cat very unhappy, but this time he’s traveling with me as a carry-on, not in the cargo pet area, so he might be a bit less stressed this time), I am posting two photos, with relatively little commentary.

The first is a view down the street where my apartment in France was located. This photo is from the opposite angle than the first image I posted of rue Hector Berlioz. That particular picture of my street was one of the first I took with my new digital SLR. The image here was taken with my other digital camera, which while it isn’t an SLR is more than serviceable enough. The vast majority of cameras are sufficient for almost any non-specialized purpose; it is the subject and composition that make a great photograph, not the equipment.

As in the majority of the other images in this series, I have not changed the contrast or light levels, only the size.

A larger version will appear in a pop-up window if you click on the photo below.

This second image is of the Garden Park, or Parc du Jardin; this park was visible from the windows in the living room of my apartment in Grenoble. About ten yards to the right of the line of lights is the street in the photo above.

Black and white seemed appropriate both for this image in terms of composition along with serving as an emotional tag for the end of my sojourn in France and noting my journey back to the United States, prompted by the serious illness of my father.

Again, the thumbnail is linked to a larger image if you click it.

If all goes according to plan, I leave Grenoble by train at 5:00AM local time for a journey that will take me through Paris to Cincinnati then finally to Austin at around 8:00PM at that location, a total of about 22 hours travel time into a new life. Even though I am returning to where I came from one year and seven months ago, both the place from whence I came and I myself have changed.

As was written once in a brilliant book: And so it goes.

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