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Venetian skyline #3

San Giorgio Maggiore at dusk, viewed from the top of the clock tower in St Mark's Square, Venice

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The story behind this image

If you want a good overview of Venice, the top of the clock tower in St Mark's Square at dusk is the place to be.

Liz and I had already witnessed a beautiful sunset from up here, and we stuck around to witness twilight over the city.

On clear evenings, just after sunset, you can watch the earth shadow form and fade over to the east as a beautiful purple band of colour on the horizon, fading to magenta and then blue as the sun dips.

The earth shadow is the shadow cast by the earth onto the atmosphere as the sun moves just below the western horizon. As the atmoshere is so thin relative to the size of the earth the effect is very short lived.

Anyhow, enough of the National Geographic spiel. To my delight I found the earth shadow formed over the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, just offshore (if that's the right term) from our perch in St Mark's Square.

Watching and photographing as the shadow formed and faded was one of the highlights of our visit to Venice.

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Image data


Filename - venice skyline 03.jpg

Camera - Canon 5D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @60mm

Exposure - 1/25sec @ f5.6, ISO200

Location - Venice, Italy

This image - 800x379px JPEG

Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2

Comments - ND grad filter used to balance exposure. Lens stabilisation used to prevent image blur.