Looking Up

[FrankMi]

In St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, Rome, this is the third minor dome on the right as we enter St. Peter’s and proceed down the main hall (nave) toward the Papal Altar. This entry hall leads to The Blessed Sacrament Chapel.

I haven't done pictures inside a church in many years so it is hard for me to judge the colour balance and tones. I do know that the gold leaf in most churches is very vibrant when it is clean (and this one is certainly no exception) but I felt that I needed to tone down the vibrance in this image because it looked unrealistically bright.

Your thoughts?



Single hand-held image, ISO 800, 1/20 sec, F/2.7, 24mm (FFE).

[Donald]

It's stating the obvious, but worth saying anyway just to remind ourselves of the significance of it - You have got this wonderfully symmetrical. It's so easy to just get it off by a small way and it really can affect the image. So, a good lesson for all of us to note.

The range of tone across the image looks super and I suspect that you were right in deciding to tone down the vibrancy of the gold.

One thought - On what appears to be a painted window (the one to our left). The two panes at either end on the second top row seem to have a spot on them (either that or they're bullet holes). Worth cloning them out, or would that interfere with the reality of the scene?

[FrankMi]

My but you have sharp eyes, Donald! I see the same two dots on another picture of this cupola and given that this part of the basilica is about 500 years old, I'm not surprised.

On these side windows, in the image below we are looking left at the first three chambers and their domes. We can see that the windows on the sides are between the chambers but the ones at the end are outside windows. In some cases there is significant cover over these outside windows so the sun might not shine directly on them.

In the lower right corner of this image you can see part of the main cupola designed by Michelangelo in 1558 when he was 83 years old. Michelangelo died in 1564 and the main cupola wasn't completed until 1590.