PLAY January - Nikon 50mm f/1.4G: When the 'fifty' is not so nifty!
This is the Place des Lices at Rennes: used from the middle ages and for over 500 years as a jousting and military training ground... now it is a market place. You might wonder why at the end of the working day there are so few people here. In fact. what looks like rain on the cobblestones is actually black-ice as the water used to clear away the traces of the market instantly froze on the cold ground. It was difficult to keep one's feet so most people made a detour.
This is for my PLAY project - you can read more about it in my profile - where I'll be using a different prime lens for each month of the year: in January it's the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G on a full-frame camera (the D610 today).
Part of the reason for this project is to get instinctively comfortable with what each of the 'classic' focal lengths is good for... and what they're not good for - this is an illustration of the latter! There are equally splendid buildings on both side of this one but I couldn't include them without cutting off the magnificent and varied roof lines. If I captured the whole building, roof and all, I couldn't include the neighbouring buildings. Conclusion: architectural photography in restricted surroundings needs a wide-angle lens
The ice makes a stunning image. I think you could crop down to a horizontal above the first arches for a strong image, if you liked that. Great discipline to stick with one image all month. I don't have that yet.
You inspired me to take my 50 out as my only lens today. Interesting -- I took fewer images to begin with since I had to spend more time in planning. I can see how your PLAY project would fine-tune thinking about composition. I like this one and imagine you kept moving back to get in as much of the building as you could. The color and the reflection work so well together.
Splendid in the late afternoon light. VML the geometry, the reflections and the serried tanks of chairs. Pause for thought, Rennes is coming down with squares and buildings of the same genre.
I think your project is very interesting and something I'd like to try myself if I can just get my life in enough order to get back to (almost) everyday photgraphy.
and oh yes the great splash of red in the upper leftt window
Ian