Travel Snapshot – The Ever Crowded Spanish Steps in Rome

Spanish Steps and its surrounding is probably the most crowded area in Rome at all time. The peak would definitely be in the evening when tourists and local Italians gather and relax on staircase steps of the Spanish Steps while enjoying the sunset.

I didn’t get a golden setting sun when I was there on my Rome travel in May. It was actually a cloudy evening and it rained later on. But the crowd was still tremendous! You could see it from this snapshot photo below.

Photo Taken with Nikon D60 with Tamron SP10-24mm Ultra Wide Angle lens at widest 10mm/ Shutter speed 1/125s / Aperture f5.6 / ISO 100 / Exposure compensated to +0.3EV / Auto White Balance / cropped to the centre of the image

Travel photo tips: It was cropped to the centre of the image to increase the impact of the crowded scene. The best part of today digital photography era is the ability to easily crop your photo to the desired section and size, with help from the increasing resolution (MP) of modern digital cameras.

For this case, the original image was shot in widest angle at 10mm, as shown below…

It was great to showcase the whole scene of Spanish Steps from top of the steps, including the neighboring buildings. However, it could not show the impact of the crowd at the square as well as along the Via Dei Condotti street. If you crop it to include only those crowd below, it would look too constraint without the steps. As shown in the photo below…

So the best crop would be the first photo above, which include both Spanish Steps and Via Condotti with the crowd being highlighted. Click HERE to view the original high resolution file of these photos.

I love ultra wide angle lens. It is the best lens for travel where I could capture the whole scene with only one shot. With helps from high resolution of today’s digital camera, I could always crop it to highlight certain section of the scene later on. 🙂 – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.