Saturday, March 29, 2014

Rome. If You Want To.

I don't remember where I got the idea for this shot from - online, guide books, wikipedia - but regardless, from the first day in Rome, I knew that I wanted a shot from the Ponte Umberto I bridge. Sunset, blue hour - didn't matter. I just knew that I'd be spending some time on that bridge waiting for the light.

As it happened, I was only able to get there on day two (of two) and the way the afternoon was going, it was pretty clear that it wasn't going to be a very interesting sunset, so blue hour it was. Two problems presented themselves however. First, I mistimed my arrival - for reasons I can't explain (like I said, I knew the sunset was going to be weak) I got there way too early. In fact, I got there too early even for the sunset itself (which, again, was weak). The other problem was that the sun was generally setting behind St. Peter's - the problem being that it would take much longer to get a deep blue sky where I wanted it (it annoyed me to no end to see a nice, indigo blue sky behind me while there was still plenty of light behind St. Peter's).

All of which added up to a lot of standing around, leaning against the side of the bridge and waiting. To kill the time, I took a lot of photos, even though the light wasn't what I really wanted (and wound up deleting most of them), helping some tourists with camera problems, and just observing - mostly observing tourists snapping the same scene and keep moving. It's a shame - it was a nice scene, but the light sucked. By the time the light changed, I was the only one there. If they'd waited, they could have had this:

Rome. If you want to.

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