Santa Maria del Fiore Blue Hour, Florence, Italy

Santa Maria del Fiore blue hour photograph shows the grandeur of one of the world’s most beautiful churches. The soft, cool tones of the dawn air create a breathtaking contrast with the artificial lights illuminating the marble facade. On the left, Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome rises into the cloudy April sky. The center is dominated by the intricate Gothic design of the main cathedral and the soaring height of Giotto’s Campanile. On the far right, a sliver of the historic St. John’s Baptistery completes the frame.

Any photographer who has visited Florence knows that capturing the cathedral in its entirety is a challenge. Because of the narrow streets and tight spaces surrounding the monument, tilting your camera upward usually results in severe perspective distortion, making the massive structures look as if they are falling backward. To keep the vertical lines perfectly straight and true to life, I captured this image as a multi-shot panorama, which gave me a large enough file to correct the perspective in post-processing.

Copyright Milan Hutera, 2016. All Rights Reserved.