Family and I went to Rome and it was coincidentally the week of the enclave - wasn't planned that way since it was a Christmas present for the kids for a Spring Break trip. A once-in-a-lifetime to see the pope selected.
Purchased a "travel" lens as a do-everything lens - Canon 24-70 f2.8 Mrk II. Walked about 7-9 miles daily for 5 days so, "yes" its heavy but the f2.8 is worth it in the churches - I have no regrets on that lens.
Had 900+ pics, so I'll be rather slow going through them - but here are a few starters.
Thanks Douglas. I was very fortunate to to capture the scene with no one in it and recall I took it fairly late. Looking at the file properties, it was about 5PM CST which is 11PM or 12AM in Rome. Which, in hindsight, is odd as the young (drunk) folks come out at that time. We enjoyed staying in the plaza, but found it noisy throughout the day and night.
I went went through my files for that night, and found this picture I took in the same set ( a few minutes after the above shots) with an even wider view. This is the "0" bracket of the HDR set - I just processed it in Camera Raw to illustrate how lucky I was the plaza was empty.
POSTED EDIT: I also see in the file data that it was a 10sec exposure so there was likley more folks in the plaza than the 10sec shows.
The 3rd shot is not HDR but only the "0" from a 7 shot attempt at HDR. The only processing done for the last shot was strictly in Camera Raw and and then jpeg conversion in Photoshop. - it was 5 min worth of work. Admittedly, I have become very addicted to the "Clarity" slider in CR. Therefore no HDR processing was done for the last picture.
The middle picture is overtly HDR'ish and I can fully understand that it is sufficiently so where folks either like it or not and therein begins the endless debate of HDR versus conventional single exposure processing. I'm like you, it can be too "sugary" and therefore you just can't eat too much of that sweet.
The first picture is HDR: 7 exposures at 1-stop increments with camera resting on a towel resting on the window sill (no tripod). Processing was first through Photomatix and it meant not adding strength @ 80%, keeping saturation at 40-50%. My objective was to not do what I did with the 2nd shot by giving it too much of a noticeable HDR effect. It seemed to work since it closely matches the 3rd shot which was a single exposure. I also dropped temperature down and did not play with gamma (unlike in some photos I do). I then ran it through Neat Image for Noise Reduction. Last I bring it into Photoshop for color correction, cropping, and most importantly: Sharpening.
Believe it or not, the first shot was my very first night photography one I've taken and processed.
I appreciate the the positive comments and honest feedback on where I can improve. Refreshing to find appreciative and like-minded folks. My family thinks otherwise...here is an example where they rebelled and told me what they really think of my picture taking.
