This building is the EDF Tower (the largest electric utility company in the world), located in La Défense, next to Paris. As you can see on the photo, its entrance is built under a wide circular canopy (24m, i.e. 79 feet in diameter).
I am obviously not an experimented architecture photographer, but since that entrance reminded me so much of the infamous Star Trek spaceship, I decided to give it a try for laughs.
I first tried to photograph it with a linear lens: the largest in my bag was my tilt-shift 17mm. Unfortunately, the building was a bit too long to get it entirely in the frame
. Stepping back was not an option, as a street lamp was just behind, causing major flare when getting too close to it. So I decided to use my fisheye lens, which did the job quite well imo. I like how it made the canopy prominent, as well as the wrapping curves of the buildings in the background. I installed my tripod and took several shots at different exposures, including an overblown one to get some stars in the dark sky.
Back at home, I decided to process the photo to give it an even more obvious starship feeling, and recolored entirely the scene to those cyan/blue tones. I got kind of lucky with the stars, as clouds would not have worked so well regarding the "space" mood. I really like the result, even if the DPC resolution does not give it justice.
Thank you for the nice votes and comments, much appreciated!
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Very, very nice, Christophe! It's not often the fisheye gets so well-integrated into an architectural setting. You might want to contact the architects themselves; they'd probably love a print of this.
Can't help but think this was a really fun image to capture- well done Christophe!
I never made it over to La Défense during my recent visit. But I saw it off in the distance from several places and was quite intrigued by it. Next trip for sure!
The Enterprise
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