Michael Wilkins
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The white marble Vittoriano monument in Rome with the sun bursting in a star directly behind the bronze chariot on its roof, umbrella pines and the broken columns of an ancient forum in the foreground, the sky washed pale by the glare.

The Sun Behind the Chariot

Rome, Italy · December 2019

1D X Mark II, 35 millimetres, f 22, 1/125 of a second, ISO 100

Lined up until the sun sat in the chariot.

The Vittoriano is too big and too white to photograph head-on, so I let the sun do it: a small aperture for the star, and a spot on the pavement where it sat right behind the quadriga on the roof. The broken columns in front are older than the building by a couple of thousand years, which is roughly how Rome works. The pines are just being pines.

Part of Rome, a series.