The famous view of Canal Grande seen from the Rialto Bridge.

Crossing the Rialto Bridge is a must do experience when visiting Venice. And if you have the option to plan it, try to do it at sunset. The houses along Canal Grande look just awesome with the lights and colors. Stay and watch the traffic for a while. Gondolas, Varporettos, taxi boats, and ordinary people cruising in their small speed boats. It’s a very busy area, the bridge itself included.

This photo I shot using my 24-70mm Sony Zeiss lens attached to my Sony A7R. As you can see, the light is fading quickly, but I really didn’t want a long exposure. Opened the lens to it’s maximum, which is ‘only’ f/4, and then I cranked up the ISO to 2500. I got a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the three gondolas navigating.

I shot it as a 3 shot HDR photo, but the gondolas and for the water and boats, I only used the one exposure, the middle one. The bright exposure is too long, and the boats get blurry, and the dark was, well too dark.