This is a photo taken looking straight up one of the smaller, back staircases at the Marin Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The results are almost abstract: I don't think one is quite sure what one is looking at. There's very little Photoshop work here, just a bit of adjustment to compensate for the mixed-color-temperature light environment.
Wright Stairs, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
The ambiguity of not knowing what you are looking at is what interests me about this photo, and what I liked when I saw it forming in my viewfinder and on my LCD. If I hadn't told you this view was looking up, would you have known?
[Nikon D300, 12-24mm zoom lens at 15mm (22.5mm in 35mm terms), 10 seconds at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
Related images: Resistance to Spirals Is Futile, Endless Stair.
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It's hard to say how the picture would have struck me had you not said what it was, because you said what it was before you presented it. I would have been nice to have presented the picture first, to allow the viewer to experience it firsthand, so to speak.
It's definitely a nice nice, nevertheless.
Very interesting and beautiful to look at. And no, I would initially assume (for a split second) that it's some sort of a hall with many doors, and only on closer inspection would notice obvious visual inconsistencies with such an interpretation (e.g., lights, or the lower part). In way, it is very "Escheresque" it its difficulty to resolve the prespective and spatial orientation. It also makes me think of paintings by Magritte, de Chirico, and the Spanish / Mexican painter Remedios Varo, whose images are often set in the otherworldly universe of strange walls and arched doorways, many with a similar, warm-colored glow. By virtue of it's relative simplicity and monochrome character, it's also a good counterpoint to your "Spirals" and "Dream Stairs".