Facade of the Duomo

The ornate main entrance of the Duomo in Florence. The Neo-Gothic style of this marble facade was designed to match Giotto's bell tower, and was not finished until the late 1800s, even though the cathedral itself was consecrated centuries earlier.

A note for photo geeks: This is a shot where a view camera would have come in handy. There was very little room to back up to shoot these doors, so I had to use a very wide lens and tilt the camera up. As a result, the lines of the door converge -- as if the whole building were leaning backwards. That's not how it looks here because after scanning the slide, I used a digital photo editor to correct the perspective. With a view camera, however, there'd be no need to do such digital work (and the result would be more satisfactory). You could use a camera movement called "front rise," which would allow the whole subject to be in the frame but the camera back to stay straight up and down. By keeping the camera back straight up and down, the vertical lines remain vertical. If you look through Architectural Digest, you'll see how all of the vertical lines are perfectly vertical, even with very wide angle shots. That's because savvy architecture photographers use view cameras.

LENS: 17-35 at ~17mm | FILM: Fuji Provia 100F | EXPOSURE: f/5.6 at 1/?" | DATE: 10/03

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