Catedral de la Almudena

As I showed recently I really like using puddles for creating reflections. Here is another example showing Cathedral de la Almudena in Madrid. In this case I wanted to create nice symmetry. As the cathedral was symmetrical around vertical axis itself I wanted to give one more dimension of symmetry around horizontal axis (this way the image should be also symmetrical by both diagonal axes) by using reflection. Of course the crane and buildings in the far back ruin the effect a bit but I think it still looks quite interesting.

From the image it might seem that the puddle I used to reflect the building was really huge, 60 meters in diameter or so. The truth is it had rather normal size (around 80 cm in diameter, maybe even less). It's just a simple illusion, small optical trickery. What I did was to shoot with a wide-angle lens from a very low angle by... putting my camera in the water (let's say I was testing if it's really well-sealed against water - don't try it yourself though). As the lens was just a few millimetres above puddle surface, everything what was close to it appeared larger. Things in the back laying in the same surface (the ground) became shorter in turn. For instance notice that there is almost no gap between the puddle end and the fence (it was about 50 meters) and between the fence and the cathedral (real gap was about 60 - 70 meters).

EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/20.0
Exposure time: 1/13 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 400
Number of exposures: 3
E.V. Step: 2
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: circular polarizing filter
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 4.2, Photoshop CS6