A Thinking Man

Initially I thought I would have to bin it, but after about 30 minutes work I think I finally managed to salvage something.

The John the Baptist Baptistry in Florence (Il Battistero di San Giovanni) is thought to be one of the oldest buildings in Florence. It stands in the Piazza del Duomo, just to the west of the Duomo. Until the end of the 19th century all Catholic Florentines were baptized in this church. I thought it was one of the most attractive buildings and was keen to photograph it.

According to Wikipedia:

It is certain that a first octagonal baptistry was erected here in the late 4th or early 5th century. It was replaced or altered by another early Christian baptistry in the 6th century. A new and much larger octagonal baptistry was built in Romanesque style around 1059, evidence of a period of growing economic and political importance of Florence. It was reconsecrated on 6 November 1059 by Pope Nicholas II, a Florentine. The construction was already finished in 1128. An octagonal lantern was added to the pavilion roof around 1150. It was enlarged with a rectangular apse on the west side in 1202.

Between the 14th and the 16th century, three bronze double doors were added, with the bronze and marble statues above them. This gives a good indication that the baptistry, and not the cathedral, was initially in the highest esteem of the Florentines.

The problem was the thousands of people like me - visiting tourists who seemed to be thronging the building every time I passed by with my camera, crowding the view and obscuring a lot of the famous bronze doors.

One evening, on my way to attempt some twilight shots of the Ponte Vecchio, I managed to grab a quick passing shot (see below). Most of the tourists had disappeared (apart from me) allowing a reasonable shot of the baptistry and its doors. However, at least four things meant that I produced a very disappointing picture.

1. I was in too much of a hurry and didn’t take enough time to compose the picture. The main vertical wasn’t straight, so the whole building appears to be sloping to the left.
2. I didn’t notice the annoying white van man in the bottom left corner of the shot.
3. I didn’t have my tripod with me and the low light meant there would be problems. The building would be unlikely to be sharp, and given the shutter speed I had to use (1/15th of a second) there would inevitably be some hand shake resulting in blur.
4. I had forgotten that my camera (Olympus E500) had been previously put on a landscape setting which meant that exaggerating the blues (normally great for blue skies and clouds in plenty of light) would produce an unsuitable colour cast for a building in the early evening twilight.

I was very disappointed with the dark, blue, wonky building and the empty sky. I seriously thought of sending it to the electronic waste bin.

Because I have been off work recently (and frankly, have too much time on my hands) I started to play in Photoshop and did the following:

1. I got rid of the horrible blue cast to produce a more natural looking colour.
2. I got rid of the slope to the left. Unfortunately there wasn’t quite enough space in the frame to do this satisfactorily so I was left with black bands bottom left and top right - however, these give the impression that the shot was taken from behind a café window, and strangely don’t seem to interfere too much with the shot.
3. I originally put some clouds into the sky from another photograph, but in the low light they seemed to provide too much competition for the building. In the end I put a mild graduated filter in the sky to give it some slight texture. The light in the picture seemed to be a much more accurate representation of how I remembered it.
4. I sharpened the whole shot to remove most of the blur and bring out the lines on the marble.
5. I increased the contrast to give the picture extra ‘bite’.
6. I saturated the colours slightly to bring out the bronze. When I did this, the woman in front of the bronze doors appeared to have a distractingly bright blue hat, so I removed some of her colour.
7. I dealt very severely with the man who had dared to park his van in the bottom left corner of my original.

You can see a larger version of the picture HERE.

Tags: baptistry, Battistero, bronze, camera, cathedral, duomo, Firenze, Florence, Olympus E500, photograph, Ponte Vecchio, Romanesque, San Giovanni, St John