Taking only photographs – leaving only footprints
When I am in a foreign country I always make an effort to try to photograph the said country’s flag. I had spent the morning location scouting at Piazza del Popolo in the north of the city centre and decided to take the scenic route via the banks of the River Tevere south back towards my hotel. The river was very fast moving but yet seemed to have a few house boats. Apart from that there was little activity at this time of year.
I found the Colosseum to be amazing, fascinating and photographically frustrating. This was my first trip to Rome but in the seven nights I stayed there I visited the Colosseum six times to try to get different angles in different lights, some with the crowds and some without. This close-up was taken on the second day, whilst we were waiting for our guided tour to start. The sky was blue and I had just put my super wide 10mm lens on the camera. It was more of a test shot at first, but I liked it enough to want to share it with you.
A few hundred metres from the Colosseum I spotted this graffiti tucked away on a wall. It was one of the few large pieces of graffiti I found to photograph in Rome. The majority were tagging style graffiti, examples of which you can see in the lower part of each letter. These tags were all over some of the metro / underground trains, sometimes inside and out. I thought that the man in the lower right hand corner looked pretty sinister, so I moved on pretty quickly to a more populated area.
This picture was taken on my walk from the Colosseum back to the hotel on the first night. It was more of a stairway connecting the main road with a small piazza (square). It was very dark and there were a couple of men playing instruments and drinking wine. When I had passed going up the stairs a couple of hours earlier I was a little nervous about passing them with all my camera gear, as at the time they weren’t busking, just drinking in a dark alleyway. Coming back I noticed this lamp, heard the music coming up the stairs and it seemed much more friendly and inviting. This was taken on my first day in the Italian capital.