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Wide version of photo of Pantheon.

We didn’t have any breakfast when we left the hotel early to photograph the Spanish Stairs. We figured that was ok; the hotel was quite nearby the Spanish Stairs. When we got the Spanish Stairs, they were sealed off for restoration. There was no way; we could not get any photos worth the while.

We decided to go for the Pantheon instead, but we were under pressure now. To reach the Pantheon long enough before sunrise required a forced walk. Empty stomachs and a forced walk was not the best cocktail. Half way to Pantheon we were saved by an open coffee and pastry shop. Among police officers we bought a croissant, and we were fueled, and made it to the Pantheon just in time.

About the processing of this photo

You can always process photos in different ways. Some even make a colored and a black and white of every single photo they make. I rarely do more than one version, of each photo. Sometimes I go back to fix something, that I find too displeasing in a photo.

But this one of Pantheon I have done two versions of. They share the same image processing, more or less. It is not the same file anymore, but they originate from the same HDR photo, and their path separated very late in the process.

A part of my workflow is to rumble through photos in Lightroom mobile whenever I have a few minutes. I do some preliminary processing, to find candidates for processing. Often I get an idea of what the final result could be. One of the limitations in Lightroom mobile, is that you can’t fix perspective. So I played around with cropping instead on this image, and I ended up having this very wide version of the image, that I got to like very much.

Tall version of the photo of Panteon, showing the stars more clearly.

Later when I was finalizing the processing I tried to do a perspective correction, and I liked that too. At first I stuck to the one with the perspective correction, but later I decided both qualify for final images. So here the are.

–Jacob Surland