Michael Wilkins
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Night photograph of the Colosseum floodlit from within, warm light glowing through two tiers of arches while the surrounding sky and ground fall away into near-black.

The Colosseum, Lit

Rome, Italy · September 2021

1D X Mark II, 28 millimetres, f 22, 20 seconds, ISO 100

Everything around it goes black and the arches turn into a lantern.

At night the floodlights sit inside the structure rather than on it, so the arches light from within and the whole building reads as a row of lanterns with a black hole above and below. Exposed for the highlights and let everything else go, which is close to how it actually looks standing there — the ruin bright, the modern city around it gone completely dark.

Part of Rome, a series.