| « Previous | Home | Next » | Pantheon February 23rd, 2006 |
 This shot is from last year's honeymoon trip. It's the interior dome of the Pantheon in Rome. This particular building is pretty cool not only for the architecture, but also for this hole in the roof called the oculus. It's the only source of light in the building and it opens the building up to the elements. They say the Pantheon has a good drainage system for when the rain comes in through there. When we visited the Pantheon, we were on our second day in Rome. We met up with our friends Ylene and Terry Trim, who are also from Pensacola, also happened to be on our cruise across the Atlantic, and in the case of Terry also happened to be my next door neighbor in Sebana Seca, Puerto Rico back in the 70's. It truly is a small world. Anyway, we met Ylene and Terry at the Trevi fountain and struck off down some narrow back streets in the general direction of the Pantheon. The thing about being in Rome is everywhere you turn, you see something that's either cool, historical or both. It's like being surrounded by your history, architecture, religion and culture text books in 3D. The Pantheon is no exception. As we strolled down some non-descript side street past a piazza with some historical obelisk and then back down another narrow alley, suddenly we turned a corner and there it was, right in the middle of a bunch of ordinary Roman buildings. The street level is higher in modern Rome than the ancient city. In the case of the Pantheon, it appeared to be about 10 - 15 feet higher to me. The walls are excavated out on one side so you can see where street level once was. At any rate, the challenge of this shot was to show the detail of the ceiling surrounding the oculus while not completely blowing out the picture with the bright light shining in. Incidentally I only shot this side of the dome because they were doing some restoration work on the other side and the scaffolding wasn't nearly as photographic. I think I did OK since I shot this on film and didn't know if it turned out at all until we got back to the states. Update 07/15/06 - As a result of entering this picture in the Power of Photography show, I made my first ever sale of one of my photographs. This picture also took second place in the Architecture category of the 2006 show. | |
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Posted by kadenajack Archived under: Places, Color, P.O.P. Entries, Favorites, Travels All images copyright Jack Canavan. If you'd like to use them, please ask first. |
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