@Kylie Greenan: Thanks Kylie....it was one of those days of heavy clouds with periods when the sun came out for a just few minutes from time to time providing great contrasts.

@Mirko Herzner: Thanks Mirko....you're right about the small dark patch (it was blue sky) but I'd already cropped this image as far as I wanted in order to get the flagpole properly central. Looking at jkjond's suggestion below, cloning would have worked. Sometimes when you are working on images on your own it's easy to miss the obvious things like this.

@GJC: Thanks GJC....the patch of darkness looks wrong as Mirko pointed out. I'll clone it out if I get the time to re-process this one sometime.

Re the composition comment - Just to be safe I actually took photos with the flagpole to the left and to the right hand side as well as quite a few like this in the middle. As I suspected the central compositions all looked better. The biggest variable was the flag itself (I ended up with quite a few shots where the flag was either not extended or in the wrong position in the swirling wind)

@jkjond: Thanks for the suggestion John....I'd already cropped this one slightly to the top and left sides in order to get the flagpole exactly central and didn't want to crop it any more. I should have thought of cloning it out.

(by the way CS3's B&W Converter was incredibly useful in getting separation of tones in the 3 colours of the flag)

@IanSmith: Thanks Ian!....it needs a bit more work in post processing selective areas of the image. It's a funny thing about the building. I took quite a few different variations of this photo while I was there. The majority didn't have the building in the composition as I thought at the time that it was a distraction - it was only once I saw the photos on a larger screen that I realised that the building was important in order to give scale to the image as a whole.

@Paolo: Hi Paolo.....I always try for the 'classic' photo if I get a chance as it's such a great way to learn more about photographic composition. This photo looked great in colour but I thought it was much more interesting with the colour (and obvious nationality) removed by converting it to B&W.

The flag as a potent symbol of patriotism is what I found interesting rather than anything especially French.

@Laurie: Thanks Laurie....I learnt some new things about composition whilst taking (and processing) this photo.

@MadScientist: Thanks!

@hugo poon: Thanks Hugo!....I hope you had a good break.