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  • Empty Chairs and Empty Tables

    Empty Chairs and Empty Tables

    First doors and windows, now tables and chairs. I’ve started to find these latter items as interesting as the former. Outdoor seating at restaurants is very common in Rome, whether streetside, alleyside, or piazzaside, so there are plenty of tables and chairs about. It rained a number of times during my visit, chasing the patrons…

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  • Grunge of Rome

    Grunge of Rome

    As beautiful as Rome is, it has plenty of rough edges. We’ll start this set with an old latch on a well-graffitied door, above. This is a simple scene, below, but the colors of the pallet and the wall pair together well. As with most of this week’s images, there are a lot of textures…

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  • Windows on Rome

    Windows on Rome

    Being a sucker for windows wherever I go, Rome was definitely getting a post on the subject. Windows, of course, are found in walls, and the walls in Rome are just oozing with character. And occasionally with other things, like the dark streaks above. Vines climbing up walls are not particularly common in the middle…

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  • Doortraits of Rome

    Doortraits of Rome

    You didn’t think that I wouldn’t get around to doors, did you? I enjoy photographing interesting doors anywhere, and Rome is no exception. The image above is typical of the warm, weathered look of streets in Rome. I love the colors and textures. The flower shop door, next, lacks the warm colors of the previous…

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  • Climbing the Basilica

    Climbing the Basilica

    Making images of architecture is always, at some level, trying to transform someone else’s art into your own, but this seems particularly true when the subject is the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica. On top of that, untold millions of people have been there with a camera before you. With landscape photography, you can always…

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  • Exterior Columns

    Exterior Columns

    A tidy row of columns lends itself to compositions that rely on symmetry. This week’s post is full of columns, but this is the only image that exploits it. It uses the converging parallels that come from looking upwards, too. I wish I had had my 14-24 zoom with me, because I think a little…

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  • Stairways of the Long-Dead Rich

    Stairways of the Long-Dead Rich

    My favorite quality of the image above is the subtle color contrast between the warm lighting on the stairway and balcony and the bluer light filtering down from a skylight overhead. The contrast gives the image much of its sense of depth. I tested this hypothesis by converting it to black and white; the result…

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  • Streetlights of Rome

    Streetlights of Rome

    I could have used this first image as a high-contrast entry in last week’s post, but it makes a good transition into this week’s theme: street lamps. For that matter, this next image would have worked, too: Moving beyond the simple silhouettes, this next image is fun. It’s a rather cluttered alley with all the…

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  • High-Contrast Rome

    High-Contrast Rome

    As promised, this week’s collection of images are much higher-contrast than last week’s: lots of deep shadows and silhouettes. The image above exploits the strong late-afternoon light raking across the face of the building., which accentuates the texture and adds long shadows cast from the smallest of protuberances. My favorite part, though, is the way…

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  • Roaming the Roads of Rome

    Roaming the Roads of Rome

    Wandering around central Rome with a camera. It’s easy to get tired doing that, but not easy to get tired of doing that. There are fun things to find down every alley and around every corner, and there are a lot of both. The only real challenge is that Rome is somewhere being popular and…

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