@AliceMarie: this is completely on purpose, I wanted to exploit the nice evening side light.

@Beamer: thanks. It might be a little bit hard, unless you manage to convince the managers of Notre Dame de Paris :-) This is the main rosace on the front of the cathedral (see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Notre-Dame_de_Paris_2792x2911.jpg), so not really much choice.

I was just letting you know my opinion....lol I know whites are hard to shoot and I always notice when they are blown out.

And I thank you for your opinion.
In this case, the whites were not blown out, and the exposition was actually near perfect. I chose to increase contrast and blow some highlights to get this impression during post-processing.

In this jpeg, some of the whites are blown out. When you increase contrast, this is what happens. This is always what happens when people comment on images. You might think the image is awesome and others do not think exactly the same as you do. This has happened with a few of my images. People have opinions and say as such. This is why art/photography is hard to really judge. Some people love it and others do not...lol

I am a perfectionist with my work and it always makes me cringe when I here comments that don't follow what I feel with my own concepts.

@pursang: where would you add contrast? To the statues, the background, or both? I thought it was as high as I could go without losing too much in the low or high tones.