Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona [134/366], a photo by timsackton on Flickr.

134/366

On our second day in Rome, our main plan was to see the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. However, I wanted to play around with my B+W 10 stop ND filter (which I got for my birthday in April but had not had the chance to use yet), so I set off at 7:00 am for Piazza Navona to take some long exposures of the fountains. This is one of my first shots with the ND filter - a 50 second exposure of the main fountain in Piazza Navona. I had to darken it by a stop or so in post (I didn't quite get the exposure right), but I was quite happy with the composition and the effect of the ND filter. Converted to black and white using the Blue Hi-Contrast filter preset in Lightroom, and the adjusted slightly.

Although I did take some pictures of ancient Rome that I was pretty happy with (which I will upload once I get them processed), I picked this shot to be my picture of the day because Piazza Navona turned out to be one of our favorite places in Rome. The fountains, people, and buildings provide endless opportunities for photography and plenty of toddler entertainment.