A quick one day project while I had some free time.
I’m posting it here rather than in ‘Finished’ because it would benefit from some further refinements; lightwrap, better matching of the volume noise, better dirt textures and some particle grass, but for now it looks ok.
The photograph is from a local cemetery, and walking amongst the monuments you do get a sense of being on a massive chess board, maybe. 
It is rendered with Yafaray v3 to test the recently introduced render passes.
it looks realy good. the first thing that comes to my mind, when i saw your picture is a scene where two chess armies facing each other in the fog of the beginning morning. this would be a great scene.
It feels like a dystopia version of alice in wonderland and I love it!!!
I think you can crank up the dirt level and the edge wear. I think a knight would look awesome in this, too. Did you keep it out so it more looks like architecture when you look at it for the first time?
Maybe some puddles will ad to the scene. Love the lightning <3
At first glance I saw a city skyline, so totally didn’t see cemetery -funny what different people see. Anyways I’m sure the grass would defenitely ‘groundify’ it more:) if it’s cemetery you’re after. Very nice though-i like the volumetrics. Are they any quicker/easier/better than cycles?..or just as processor intensive?cheers.
The Materials Are too glossy for the scenbe
I belive that the scene would look better with a flat maybe rusted materials
I have added grass and lightwrap, and tinkered a bit. (Probably still looks the same:))
I’m pretty sure someone already made that render. It will be on here somewhere…
The castle could have been a bishop or a knight. I decided on castle as it’s shape seemed to fit better. I agree on dirt and edges. I never considered adding water, mainly because it was a dry day 
It adds to the render time. About 5 - 6 minutes without, and close to 10 minutes with the volumetrics.
The materials do need more wear and dirt. I’m not sure rust is appropriate for polished granite, but I will keep it in mind.
Another update, since I had another day free to play with it.
I went back a step and rendered again from scratch, this time using troy’s really useful Wide Dynamic Range LUTs, to try to better match the luminance of the background image. I also added better textures for the chess pieces and had a go at matching the sensor noise, as well as refining the lightwrap.
I think I probably have to tone down the moss and lichen. I will also render again to create a reflection pass to maybe add some glossiness back into the granite, though this might not be required after reducing the effect of the moss and lichen texture.
Moved to Finished Projects:- https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?408610-Chess-Pieces&p=3109505#post3109505
