Av Laval Architecture
Avenue Laval is a residential street in Montreal's Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood, lined with classic Quebec row houses featuring ornate ironwork staircases, colourful facades, and mature trees that form a canopy over the street in warmer months. The exterior staircases are the star of the show here, offering strong geometric patterns and repeating shapes that reward a compressed telephoto perspective, around 70-135mm, to stack the staircases and facades together into a single layered frame. Overcast days work exceptionally well by softening shadows and letting the painted colours of each house pop without harsh contrast. Early morning gives you clean, empty streets and soft directional light, while autumn brings warm foliage that adds another layer of colour to the scene. Park yourself in the middle of the street and shoot straight down the block for the best symmetry, or get low near the base of a staircase for a more dramatic foreground. (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
