Weekly Photo Challenge: Grand

Inside Saint Ignazio’s

HDR photograph of the inside of Saint Ignazio Church in Rome, ItalyIf you are ever in Rome I recommend visiting Saint Iganzio’s Church.  From the outside it doesn’t look very exciting but once you walk through the door you will be amazed.  I’m sure some art history buffs will argue but I thought the ceiling was better than the Sistine Chapel’s and there was no waiting in line and no admission.  What you can’t see in the picture is all of the amazing sculpture that decorates both sides of the church.

The lighting in these churches ranges from very dark to extremely bright.  To create this image I had to blend 5 different exposures together.

Click on the image to see a larger version of it.

Statue in Piazza del Campidoglio

photograph of a statue in Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, Italy

My friends and I were pass through Piazza del Campidoglio in the late evening when I captured this image of one of the statues in the piazza.  We walked by it earlier that day but the statue was in the shade so the lighting was very cool and flat.  The evening sun cast its warm, hard light on the statue in a way that made for a much better photo.  I considered converting this image to black and white or even just desaturating the colors.  Eventually I decided I liked the warmth and intensity of the colors just the way they were recorded by my camera.

Spacious

photograph of a woman and child in a large, open area behind a large, ornate chandelierI caught this image at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, quite unexpectedly.  I was photographing the Blue Ridge Chandelier, on the right side of the image, when the girl moved to look out an enormous window off the left side of the photograph.  I was immediately drawn to the spaciousness of this image.

 

Blue Ridge Chandelier

photograph of Dale Chihuly's Blue Ridge ChandelierThe Blue Ridge Chandelier was one of the Chihuly works on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) in the fall of 2012.  This photo gives some perspective of the size of the chandelier, which is 18 feet tall.