The Forum, Rome

Rome is a photographer’s paradise.  And amongst all the sights to take in, The Forum is arguably one of the most impressive.  Covering an expansive area in the heart of the city adjacent to the Colosseum, the place just oozes history. And it’s a photograph begging to be taken.

I imagine I could have visited The Forum on many occasions to find it bathed in sunlight beneath a clear blue sky.  On the occasion of my visit, the sky was overcast.  As weather for a sightseeing trip this isn’t ideal, but as a backdrop for a photograph (and to create light that’s easy to deal with), it couldn’t have been better – especially for a subject as atmospheric as this.

My initial intent was to do a HDR (High Dynamic Range) shot of this location – for HDR you take 3 to 7 exposures with a set aperture and shutter speeds varying so that the exposures are spread over a 4-6 stop range.  You then merge these images in some software suited to the task and perform a step called tone mapping to effectively decide what parts of the image come from what exposures and in what amounts.  The end result is often quite cartoon like, and HDR can be a love-it-or-hate-it look.  I have yet to try it seriously, so I thought this would be a good opportunity.

However, I was without a tripod, and while I tried to steady the camera on the railing, when I got home and viewed the photos on my laptop I saw slight changes in the composition between each picture, and that would either add work to the HDR process to line everything up, or make the resultant image soft.

Plan B was to take the “normal” exposure, and play around with the contrast – particularly in the mid tones.  I like the controls Aperture provides for this – the end result is like playing with Curves in Photoshop.  For this image, I was able to bring up alot of the detail in the shadows while retaining the detail in that fantastic sky.  In fact, in the colour version the contrast looked over worked.  A conversion to monochrome and a slight sepia tone seemed to suit the image better and, I hope, evokes the mood of this historic sight.