Piazza San Pietro, originally uploaded by vsacker.

First of all, this is my first attempt to post straight from Flickr, so we’ll see how this goes…

A little later in the week than I would have liked, I got around to processing an older image. This is actually four images stitched together with software from Canon, then roughly cleaned up in Photoshop. Far from perfect, but much better than the first attempt I had made years ago. I enjoy the photo even for its obvious flaws.

I came back to this image as I’ve been catching up on some podcasts that piled up while I was home with our new baby. One of those shows in the Daily Breakfast, hosts by a Dutch priest, Father Roderick Vonhögen. He recently traveled to Rome and the Vatican and has been talking about his trip in great detail.

Visiting the Vatican was one of the highlights of a trip to Italy my wife and I took a few months before our daughter was born. It was a little rainy that day, but my wife held an umbrella over me as I shot these images from the right, rear end of the piazza. With the clouds staring to yield to the sun, I thought the light was kind of nice on the wet stones.