From one city to another

I realised recently that I haven’t posted any images yet that I classify as a landscape, and so set about trying to rectify that by looking back through my library of images for a landscape image to post.  I’m not sure I’ve technically achieved that desired result with this image, but it’s worth posting all the same.

When most people think of landscape photography, they think of two things – photographs taken in the countryside, or perhaps by the seaside, and photographs which are wider than they are tall.  The problem that I discovered when looking through my library is that I don’t tend to take many photographs that fit in the former category, and those that do, often don’t fit in the latter category.  For some reason, I have a habit of taking landscapes in “portrait” format.

I’ll post a couple of images in the next few days to illustrate this, but for today’s image I’ve gone for a city landscape (in the traditional landscape format).  This shot is somewhat unique in my collection in that it is a photograph of one city taken from another city (and no, I didn’t need a 10,000mm lens!).

The shot is taken from a window in the Vatican Museum, and is of “downtown” Rome.  Two things that make this shot a “keeper” for me are the wonderful sky, which seemed to persist for my weekend in Rome, and the colour in the buildings of the city, accentuated by some nice soft light from that overhead sky, and emphasized a little in post production.

The Vatican itself is a very interesting place to visit, although I was disappointed to find out that you’re not allowed to photograph the Sistine Chapel.  They even employ people to make sure you don’t, so it’s not like you can discreetly grab a frame.  And besides, it’s dark in there so even if you did get time to focus and compose an image, you’d never have enough time for the exposure.  And with the crowds in there, you’d never hold it steady enough.  So I had to make do with looking at the roof of the Sistine Chapel and leaving the camera in its bag.  But then again, sometimes that’s no harm.