I had been waiting for this moment my whole life. We checked into the hotel, quickly made our way to the room threw our bags in, grabbed my camera and film and we were out the door. We were in Rome and the Coliseum was just blocks away. I had studied history in college as my minor and have been fascinated by the Romans since my childhood. I will never forget turning the corner and seeing it for the first time, it was magnificent. I spent the next several hours burning through film and staring in awe at the place where millions had come to die. It was just a shell of its former glory, the marble was gone, and the pillars looted for it?s valuable iron, not even the floor had remained. But nether the less it was breathtaking!
After getting home and developing the many rolls of film, I was somewhat disappointed in the outcome. I had hoped that my experience and love for photography would pay off, but I find the images somewhat lacking. My girlfriend affectionately said, ?The Coliseum is as photogenic as a block of Swiss cheese.? I must disagree.
I'm am so drawn in by this image. You are wonderful at perspective. I agree b&w is perfect. The darkness and the light of the walkway just begs the viewer closer. You can tell you are in your element and this image is an extention of your soul.
WOW, that looks great. I have absolutely no experience in Photoshop. So the pictures end up looking worse than the original, they loose some contrast in the scanning. Thanks for the help.
I've been here. Like you, I had many courses, only in Art history - so Rome was definitely a desitination.
Like you as well my photographs were disappointing. I think it is a matter of scale (that place is so big), and resolution (hard to show all of those interesting details).
One of the things we can try on this wonderful composition is try to balance the light and dark areas to pop the detail. I selected the white sky in PS, selected simular, and then grew the selection. I feathered the selection, then inverted it (this means that I was selecting only the dark parts). I then rebalanced the levels to bring out more highlights and thus added to the contrast.
I also used a sharpening filter.
With a little more time I think you could get the overall image to really pop out the details.
I like the darkness to the shot, and it looks awesome in B&W. The only thing that bugs me a little is that it isn't level. If it were tilted to the right just a tiny bit it would be perfect! Really awesome shot though! I can only imagine what it was like in person!
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