Rome, Italy.

The Tiber River partially separates the city of Rome from the city-nation, Vatican City. From the wall that rings this edge of Vatican City, you can see one of the bridges that allow travel between the two cities. The three-arch bridge in the photo was opened in 1911. Named after the King of Italy who reigned from 1861 to 1878, the bridge features four towers, each carrying bronze Winged Victory sculptures. The span is 350 feet (108 m) in length.

About the photo: Captured with my Samsung S20U, I was shooting directly into the sun which was just off the image on the top. When I first looked at the photo, I was afraid that the huge solar flair light leak would make the photo unusable. Luminar Neo came to the rescue. I opened the file directly in Neo and immediately went to work on the flare. If I couldn’t get that flare cleaned up, there wasn’t much hope for the image without a major crop.

I wasn’t expecting success with the erase tool and thought I might end up using Neo’s sky replacement feature. I decided to try the Erase tool anyway as it’s pretty efficient. The first couple of tries left duplications of clouds due to the cloning that the tool uses. A couple of undo and retries and some erasure of duplicate cloud effects cleaned up the sky pretty nicely.

I then went to Neo’s Develop module and raised the shadows to bring out more detail in the backlit bridge. I didn’t raise the control very much as it made the bridge “look funny”. Raising the shadows also created another issue. That tower directly under the solar flare didn’t look right as it was a bit hazy and the exposure didn’t match. I used a radial mask to put an oval around that tower and tweaked the exposure and dehaze inside the mask. The goal was to match the look of the tower on the right for exposure. All in all, I think the extra work was worth the processing time. You can view both of these images in 2K HD on my Flickr site. Just click on an image to check it out.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

Rome, Italy.

After World War I, many countries chose to bury an unknown soldier, as they note in the United States memorial, “known but to God.” The Italian unknown soldier rests under the statue of the goddess Roma at the Altare della Patria and represents all of the Italian soldiers killed and missing during the war.

The monument was dedicated in 1921 and the beautiful Romanesque architecture disguises the monument’s true age as it is barely over a century old. The article about the monument on Wikipedia notes that the piazza is the scene of official ceremonies that take place annually on the occasions of Italian Liberation Day (April 25), Italian Republic Day (June 2), and National Unity and Armed Forces Day (November 4).

In researching the details for this post, I found a moving story of how the unknown soldier was chosen for the honor. The mother of a soldier who was lost in the war was selected and allowed to review the caskets of eleven unknowns. She would choose one to represent all of the Italian unknowns. You can read the story here.

About the photo: Captured with my Samsung S20U, I was on the upper deck of a tour bus that drove by the monument. I could not hear the tour guide due to the poor public address system on the bus, so once the photo was captured, I used the GPS metadata captured by my phone to geolocate my position when the photo was taken. Given the design of the monument, I was sure this was some monument for an early Roman ruler.

I brought the image into Adobe Lightroom where I adjusted for tilt and cropped as necessary. Then I took it to Luminar Neo for noise removal, a tweak by the Enhance AI tool, and raising the shadows to bring out more detail in the shaded front of the monument. Click on the image to view it in 2K HD on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

Rome, Italy.

This week, our Cellpic Sunday features a guest photo by my niece, Patricia Broesder. She and her husband accompanied Lynn and me on our Mediterranean cruise from London to Rome in the autumn of 2022.

One of the iconic streets in Rome is Via Veneto. As we strolled along, we ran into several giant lobster sculptures. They are obviously not in the classic style of art we expected to see in the ancient city. When my niece aimed her camera to take an image of the unusual lobster covered in sunflowers, I stepped from behind to photobomb her image.

The lobster sculptures varied from humorous to histrionic as in this example of King Lobster dispatching Medusa. We were to learn after returning to the United States that these sculptures were on display through January 8, 2023, and were the work of British artist Philip Colbert. The Scotland-born artist now lives in London and is considered the “Crown Prince of Pop Art.”

About the photos: The opening image was captured on an iPhone and King Lobster was photographed on my Samsung, both basically snapshots in composition. Patricia shared her image with me for publication here and I tweaked both images in Luminar Neo by first dropping them into the HDR module as single images, followed by cropping and straightening. Both images received Luminar Neo’s new Noise Reduction processing and I then used Neo’s Enhancement AI tool and the Structure AI tool to add some contrast and detail. The processing took no more than 5 minutes each.

Both of these images fit the definition of public art, so I am including them in the #PPAC (Photographing Public Art Challenge) now being hosted by Natalie the Explorer. As this is being written in December for the February 19, 2023, Cellpic Sunday post, I am linking it to Natalie’s main page where you can see her latest PPAC post.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner