Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged architecture, arts, classical, fountain, grotesque, Italy, night, photography, renaissance, Rome, sculpture, shadow, statue on January 6, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Piazza della Rotonda, Rome : 23rd August 2012
This particular piazza in central Rome is most famous for one of the city’s star attractions, the imposing and ancient Pantheon, but it is also home to an obelisk, at the base of which is an intriguing sixteenth-century fountain. Here are two of the four sides captured at night, and given different post-processing treatments. In both cases the non-use of flash allowed the fountain’s lighting to cast eerie shadows over the somewhat grotesque figures…
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged abstract, detail, drops, fountain, haze, macro, rainbow, splash, water on April 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Fountain Rainbow” : Tokyo, 18th March 2012
I walked around the grounds of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, only to be disappointed in finding that the eastern section, the only part normally open to the public, was closed due to it being a national holiday.
Nearby, however, I found an interesting little park with a fountain, which although not too exciting in itself, proved to be a rich hunting ground for interesting details like this tiny rainbow suspended in the cascading droplets.
Of course, this is flawed in that I didn’t use a high enough shutter speed to properly freeze the liquid, but still I think it makes for an interesting warm, fuzzy kind of image more akin to a canvas than a photograph.
Click here to see a larger version of this photo.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged fountain, frozen, high speed, Italy, monochrome, Rome, water on March 11, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Frozen Fountain Flow” : Rome, 28th March 2011
Another shot from my last day in Italy almost a year ago (see Photo of the Day #304).
This time I went for monochrome as it seemed to highlight the sheet of water more, and by now I was pushing the shutter speed up 1/3200th of a second to really freeze the flow (technical aside – I had to increase the ISO to be able to shoot at such high speeds, which resulted in slightly poorer image quality).
Hmm….this reminds me that I don’t do enough experimentation in my photography these days. Let’s try to remedy this soon…
You can find a larger version of this photo here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged fountain, frozen, Italy, Piazza del Popolo, Rome, time, water on March 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Fountain Frozen in Time” : Rome, 28th March 2011
It was the final day of my three-week trip to Italy last spring, and I was back in Rome with just a few hours to spare, finding myself in that strange transitional state between the freedom and excitement of holiday and the dread of returning back to the mundane routines of ‘real’ life.
I did a final loop around the central sites of my favourite city, then found myself on the Piazza del Popolo, where I became intrigued with the fountains at the base of the Egyptian obelisk in the centre of the square, and spend ages working out how to get the exposure right for freezing the water in the air.
Here’s one of the results : far from perfect, but quite satisfying nonetheless.
I suppose in a way, my sudden idea to delve into the world of high shutter speeds was an echo of my desire to freeze time itself and thus prolong my stay in the Eternal City…
You can see a larger version of this photo here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged cascade, fountain, Norway, Oslo, photo, photography, statue, Vigeland Park on July 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I took this photo in Oslo’s astounding Vigeland Park, a wide expanse of calming nature littered with bizarre and sometimes creepy statues.
It was five years ago, and my unschooled hands on the basic Nikon D50 led to some compositional issues and a large chunk of the sky being woefully overexposed.
Nevertheless, this picture has a strange luminous, glowing quality in the fountain cascades and the strange broccoli-like structures in the foreground, giving it an other-worldly feel.
Of course, I may have helped this along a bit with some recent ‘tweaking’ 
A larger version of this picture can viewed here at my dedicated website and store, Andy Lightfoot Photography.
