Rome. High on the Aventine hill in Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta (the Square of the Knights of Malta) is the knights’ private garden and the way into the garden is through a huge entranceway with a locked wooden door. There is a tiny keyhole in the center of the door through which one is able to view an arbor way of trees, which frames the Dome of St. Peter’s in the distance. (text from thetravelzine.com)

This picture was realized overlapping two frames, made with two different exposure timing: 1/15 seconds (for a good exposure of the garden) and 1/100 seconds (for a good exposure of the dome). I fixed the aperture to the same value f/4,9 to obtain the same field dept. In computer post-production I overlapped the two frames only in the central zone with a feather on the levels. Finally I applied the unsharp mask.

This is a picture of St John in Lateran, the first cathedral of Rome, where Emperor Constantine allowed the Pope to set up the episcopal chair after 312.
I’ve taken this photo last sunday, when I passed by the church while I was sitting on the rear seat of my brother’s car.

Yes, I know! I’ve currently the tendency to shoot pictures from moving means of transport. But I do it also to have speedly different points of view.

After the shooting, I’ve applied a number of graphical correction as the Curves adjustment, the highlight level and the unsharp mask. Doesn’t the result seem to have an atmosphere of a panting, now?

This scenery show bright green fields with hills in background. It was taken from a running train going through the Lazio’s countriside.

Note, like in the Running past the dawn’s photo, how the close-up grassland appears “dragged” because of motion of the train (hint: put camera lens to the window to avoid nasty reflections).

I would have liked to apply some levels correction only in the top of the picture, to underline the shape of clouds. So I used a layer mask to apply this correction in a chosen part of the figure, brushing white to activate the correction and black to deactivate it.

Leo (the latin for Lion) is the funny dog of my girlfriend. Here one can see Leo sticks tongue out.

This photos is simple to all appearance, but because of the proximity of the subject I have brought correctly into focus only Leo’s eyes. To resolve such problem, I have applied the unsharp mask to adjust contrast in the whole picture and, in addition, in a overlapping layer over the Leo’s muzzle. All this to obtain a virtual, but visible, uniformity of focusing.

How do the passage between day and night conditions the life of the people? And how do it conditions the atmosphere and the light of a picture?

All the answers are reassumed above in an only image, result of a superimposition of 4 photograms shot through the twilight, between 5 pm and half past 6 pm.

Even if the sky is cloudy, it can be source of beautiful pictures. And if some computer graphics techniques are applied, the result can seem… ultramundane!

Technically this picture is realized taking an image of the sun covered by clouds with an exposure of 1/2000 seconds, a focal lenght of 17mm, f/8.3, ISO-50. That short exposure is available only in automatic mode in my digital camera. The limit is 1/1000 seconds in manual mode.

After shooting I regulate contrast with the “curves” function and I have applied a color variation towards… red. Incredible, isn’t it?