I took a picture similar to this, but Benji’s was a trillion times better, so I put his up. Speaking of which, now that I have my grimy little hands on all his best Europe pictures, if he doesn’t start posting them soon, I will! His blog is hosted on my server so all I have to do is hop into MySQL, add myself an administrator account in WordPress, and go to town. The problem is, he would probably like that because I would be doing a lot of the work for him. Maybe I should post his pictures on my blog. And take credit for them! Yeah, that’s a threat that’ll scare him! Start posting, brother boy! 
Oh, yeah… the picture… that’s Heidi getting herself caricatured with the whole family standing around watching.
One of the many obelisks brought from Egypt to Rome by the emperors
I’m tired of moving the three best pictures to above the fold (and messing with my narrative and flow to boot), so this time (and likely future times) you just got the first three chronological pictures. Some of the most spectacular ones are below the fold. Don’t miss them.
I kinda like how the Italian and Euro flags are melded into each other, sort of like Italian sovereignty
The Pantheon was built in 125 A.D. by Emperor Hadrian to honor all the gods; it was a church since the 7th century
Mighty columns of the Pantheon
The mighty, ancient dome of the Pantheon
I normally shy away from taking flash pics of the inside of cathedrals, mosques, pagan temples, etc because I love ambient light; however, I did it quite frequently on the Europe trip (and a bit in Istanbul) out of necessity because the evil guards wouldn’t let me take a tripod inside in many cases (or I simply wasn’t in the mood to lug it on a walking tour of Rome all day) and I needed to remain at low ISOs for HDRs. So, I turned to flash. It certainly gives a different look and would be impossible without an external flash, but how does it look compared to ambient? What do y’all think? Give feedback here and on any other flashed fotos.
Another obviously flashed foto of the inside of the pantheon
I had a bit of a fascination with pigeons and statues, as you may remember with dear St. Paul; they do make such a colorful contrast to the stone white statues that are so omnipresent in Rome
Another view of the Pantheon
A sweet mall that we ducked into when it started to rain in more earnest than the evil drizzling all day (of course the day of our walking tour of Rome). To be fair, I would like to point to the great advantage of a drizzly day (which don’t include wrapping your camera in plastic as you walk) for a shooter, especially an HDR shooter: dramatic skies. That is, when there are visible clouds, not just a gray slate. Which, if you examine the colosseum pics in this post, was the case. I notice this especially as I am living in Jerusalem in which every stinkin’ day is a blue, cloudless day. It makes for very uninteresting skies.
Barcaccia Fountain by the Spanish Steps
Heidi taking a drink
A view out the tea room window of the Spanish steps. This would be a pertinent place to insert a rant about the weakness of the dollar and inflation in Europe and the inevitable additional price hike at such a famously touristy spot not to mention that this was ALSO one of the ritziest shopping districts in Rome; I’m quite glad I don’t remember how much that tea and those biscuits cost me. If anyone wants to buy a print of this picture, thus offsetting the cost of the tea and biscuits and providing salvation for my conscience, drop me an email.
Mom and Kristi ascending the Spanish Steps
The famous Trevi Fountain. Legend has it that if you throw a coin in (while facing away) over your left shoulder with your right hand, you will return to Rome. Whatever the case, the fountain nets about $4000 per day which is removed nightly. If I would have been thinking ahead, this would have been a good place to subsidize that tea and biscuits…
The Imperial Fora area, I think (these next three pics are all Imperial Fora or the Roman Forum); Roman Fora were the heart of ancient Rome, sort of like the main square, except ever so much more so
For accuracy: part of a Roman Forum
Roman Fora/um
The Colosseum
My two dear siblings shooting away in the Colosseum with Lorne smiling and looking on
A higher view of the Colosseum
The group! (minus Benji who took this picture)
Poor Dietrich expressing his (largely theatrical) dissatisfaction at getting squished
A busy Roman street; I must stop and acknowledge that this shot was Benji’s idea (I saw him doing it). However, I maintain that I executed it better than he did (which is rare enough that I feel a little liberty to say so). This was mostly due to my use of HDR, which he snobbishly refuses to do. I think he feels the same way about HDR as film photographers do about digital.
More Benji inspired shooting. I absolutely love the optical stabilization on my Sigma 18-200mm! I was handholding this at ISO 100, f/5.6, and 1/3 second exposure. I am, however, delighted to see that Canon finally released a version of this lens that is long overdue (even though list price is $200 more than the Amazon price for the Sigma version; hopefully the Amazon price will be significantly less than list; usually Amazon cuts 15%-40% off list price for Canon lenses). Awesomely, they also made it the kit lens on the freshly released 50D. Seems like a good excuse to buy a 50D, to me! Save money on the Canon 18-200 IS!
Looking at this post, it seems I get more talkative at 3am… is this a good thing or a bad thing? I’m on Ramadan break from both teaching English and learning Arabic, so I make my own hours which are decidedly nocturnal in habit.
One Response
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:08 am
Once again no post-processing (beyond HDR conversion) with the following exceptions:
“Mighty columns of the Pantheon” is a combination of the HDR frame and the regularly exposed one. This is mostly because of the runaway noise in the dark parts of the image.
“Another view of the Pantheon” has a gradient sky. I can’t stand blown out skies.
“The Colosseum” was heavily post processed with selective color balance, selective leveling, and several small repairs to stitching errors.
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