The Artful Engineer

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 was indeed very flat.

There might not seem to be too much going on in this next image, but the view threading the needle between columns gives it depth from four distinct layers: the out-of-focus column on the left, the column on the right, the lamp itself, and the wall behind. The lighting is nice, too, with gradients on the far wall, shadows of the chain on the ceiling above, and a kiss of light on the top of the railing below.

This next image took a fair amount of work in terms of perspective correction, which forced me to go for a tall and skinny 2:1 crop, but I think the result fits the central arch comfortably.

My favorite image from the week’s set is this next one. The combination of some columns being lit by late-afternoon light streaming through windows and others being silhouetted against dimly-lit walls is magical. The far walls along the stairway are not as dimly-lit as it appears here, of course: it is a result of exposing for the brightly lit columns in the foreground. The muntins in the windows casting their shadows as little lines across the columns is also a nice extra, as is the half-visible lamp.

Here is a very different view of the same staircase:

And, finally, here is a tighter composition that exploits the gentle S-curve formed by the stairway:

If you like this stairwell, I have posted another view of it on the home page as the image of the week.

Most of the images in this post of from inside Palazzo Barberini. The other two (Golden Arches and Hanging Lamp) are from some other spectacular building in Rome; I’m suspicious that the geotag is a block or two off. Sometimes I resort to Google Maps’ street view and (virtually) walk around the block until I match the viewpoint, but Google hasn’t gotten so creepy that you can skulk around building interiors. Yet.

(Update: Well, it turns out that you kind of can…Google was able to recognize Golden Arches as being inside Palazzo Venezia, which was indeed a block away from the geotag, which I have now corrected.)

I hope you enjoyed this week’s images.

Next week we will see a lot more columns, but they will be outside.