Day 35 and 36 - Water and Stone

These pictures are, as some of you might have figured already, from Piazza Navona, right outside the Church I've been showing you pictures of the last few days. Here you'll find yet another Roman obelisk, but it didn't make into my choice photos because of background problems - I'm very picky with what pictures I keep and even more picky with the ones I choose to edit. That's the way you get, for bad or worse, when you've been an eager aspiring hobby photographer for... has it been seven years already!? Wow, where did the time go... Being picky is both great and not so great. It's great because it keeps you on your toes and makes you think about your shots in a way that makes you a better photographer, but it's not so great because you loose that spontaneous element of photography - the "point and shoot" without any preparation. So called snapshots really have their own charm and I like how they capture "real moments" rather than choreographed or planned ones, if that makes sense, but I digress.

Anyway, You'll find three fountains at this square and these are pictures of the largest of them - the Fountain of the Four Rivers by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It displays four river gods and represents the four continents to where the papal authority has spread by depicting famous rivers - the Nile (Africa), Danube (Europe), Ganges (Asia) and Rio de la Plata (South America).

I'm beginning to find my footing with the gloomy pictures I think. A comment from my favorite sarge got me thinking a bit, and I tried something that I haven't done before in the middle picture. This is where it all gets a bit nerdy, but it occurred to me that the flat look you get out of photos shot on overcast days can be overcome through selective editing. So, I faked things a bit and edited the statue and the background differently from each other when it came to color. In real life, the color of the stone fountain and the church in the background is much more similar, but I wanted the statue to stand out more, so I edited it accordingly. It's still a gloomy picture, but I like it a lot more with the faked interplay of foreground and background. It may not be entirely honest... but then most photos aren't. From mobile photo filters to "Photoshopping"... everybody likes to enhance their shots :)

/MrsHjort