Upper Chapel, Sainte-Chapelle – Paris, France

I’ve been leading up to the visual splendor of Sainte-Chapelle for a few days, and now you can see why it’s a popular tourist destination. This magnificent space, known as the Upper Chapel, is surrounded on four sides by stained glass, and this is what you see as you reach this floor via the spiral stone staircase from the lower Chapel I featured yesterday.

Starting around 1238, it took about a decade to finish Sainte-Chapelle, considered among the highest achievements of the Rayonnant Gothic architecture period. I’m astounded by impossibly thin gothic arches holding up the ceiling and the walls.

It was an overcast day when I visited, and I was concerned I wouldn’t see the full colorful effect. In retrospect, not having a strong and direct sun made capturing all the stained glass details easier without blowing out the highlights. Nevertheless, I shot this at a negative 2 1/3 stops, underexposing aggressively not to lose any window details. I then used post-processing to lift the shadows and perspective corrected the distortion.

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