Weekly Photo Challenge: Peek

Last week I showed you photos taken at the top of St. Peter’s Basilica from the outside viewing area.  This week I’ll show you a few details of the interior of the dome. These are shots I took on the walk up, just a few details from a place that is a grand and beautiful. I’m a bit leery of heights. Sometimes, that fear inspires me to take a photo.  Here I am taking a peek into St. Peter’s:

ISO 320 4.15 f/2.2 1/17

To get this photo, I focused on the grid and allowed the background to blur. Even with the blur, it’s pretty easy to see how ornate St. Peter’s is.  A photo like this also expresses my fear of heights, I often feel that I can’t focus correctly, so I have directed the camera lens to do the same. I was using my iPhone, which likes to self-correct things it feels the photographer is getting “wrong”, so it took a few shots to get the photo I wanted. In this case, I knew I wanted the shot to be in its finished form without any further editing.

In some ways, it was much easier to get this shot:

ISO 500 4.15mm f/2.2 1/17

Close up detail of the eye of an angel, part of one of the many mosaics that ring the walkway of the landing.  Close-up, in focus shots, are the kind of photos that I think my phone generally handles pretty well. Again though, the camera defaults to catching what it thinks is correct; while the details are correct, the color is not.  The original file looks like this:

ISO 500 4.15mm f/2.2 1/17

I edited the photo in Lightroom.  I warmed the overall temperature, giving it a bit more of a golden glow.  A warmth not captured in the photograph, but that I felt was there at the time.  I’ve also sharpened it a bit and darkened the corners, to draw your eye to the eye in the photo.

I knew there were steps and a climb involved at St. Peter’s.  It would have never occurred to me though not to bring both of my cameras.  This is one of those times that people sometimes make the argument that it is better not to bring a camera, to just be in the moment. I can respect that line of thought, but for me this is a time of compromise.  I took out my camera, got the shots I wanted, then put my camera away and just spent some time looking around.  I’m that person in my family, the one that always gets to the top last.  How do you handle times like these? do you ever go without your camera?  How do you like my glimpse inside St. Peter’s?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Rounded

I climbed to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica this week and looking down couldn’t help but noticing how rounded St. Peter’s Square looks:

ISO 500 22mm f/9.0 1/800

I went in the early morning.  They officially open at 8, but were letting people in before that, so I was at the top just a few minutes after 8.  It was a hazy morning, but that made the view beautiful.  Here is the original file:

ISO 500 22mm f/9.0 1/800

The edits I have done in Lightroom included bumping up the temperature slider and the clarity. Other than that, I felt that the image worked as is.  It’s rare that I don’t crop a photo, but it this case I felt that wasn’t necessary. The best edit was the simplest one.  I had attempted in other edits to make an HDR version of this photo; I also cropped a version using the straighten feature.  Ultimately, it was this edit you see above that ended up being my favorite.

The climb up the dome itself was not my favorite moment in Rome. It isn’t hard in terms of the number of steps, but if you have trouble with closed in spaces it might not work for you.  The stairs are narrow and spiral inward in places. I made it, but it wasn’t a fun climb for me.  I was glad to have gone early in the morning when there were not too many other people which meant that I could just keep climbing to get to the outside viewing area and fresh air faster.   When I had done my research on the climb, I had only really considered the number of steps and not the space where those steps were. The view was worth the climb though.

The photo was worth the effort.  Have you ever felt this way about an image you have taken? What do you think of my minimal edit?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!