Taking only photographs – leaving only footprints
This stone crest with two angels is a close up of the area above the doorway at the back of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Italy. There were many details on hundreds of the old buildings, churches and basilicas around the city that I found fascinating and wanted to record, but this was one of the favourites that I found. I feel that the texture of the stone work is really brought out well with the black and white processing.
I was in Rome in the second week of January 2011 and wasn’t expecting to see Christmas Trees still up, but that is the tradition in Italy. This particular Christmas Tree was in the middle of the Spanish Steps. As I walked up the steps and looked back down the Via dei Condotti (the busy road in the background) I knew that a close up of the Christmas Tree with a blurred background could make for an interesting photograph.
This street has the oldest cobble stones I have ever seen in my life. So much so I had to photograph them. This is Piazza del Colosseo and it is the ‘pedestrians only’ road from which my favourite photograph of Rome’s Colosseum was taken. Although the above low down detail of this road was taken earlier in the week, I actually saw a man attempt to drive his Vespa scooter down this “road” early (before 7am) one morning. The traffic must have been really bad if this was the short cut for his daily commute as some of the gaps in the stones were a few inches wide and about 6 inches deep. He nearly came off his scooter a number of times!
Taken in the neighbourhood of Rome around the world famous Colosseum, this old Roman building is what many of the buildings around the city look like. I was particularly drawn to the way that the last light of the day was directly on this corner, making the orange colour stand out. This along with the old wooden shutters made it worth capturing in my opinion. It is a shame about the TV aerials, but I wasn’t going to start Photoshopping them out.