Michael Wilkins
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Blue-hour photograph of Trajan's Column standing lit between umbrella pines, the domed church of Santa Maria di Loreto glowing pink beside it, wet road reflecting the street lights in the foreground.

Trajan's Column, Blue Hour

Rome, Italy · December 2019

1D X Mark II, 58 millimetres, f 22, 15 seconds, ISO 100

Wet roads are the only reason to shoot a city in the rain.

Blue hour after rain, which is the best twenty minutes a city ever gives you: the sky still holds colour, the lights are on, and the road doubles everything. Trajan's Column has stood on this spot since 113 AD with a continuous carved frieze spiralling up it — a war reported in stone, in order, from the bottom. The church beside it is fourteen hundred years younger and looks like it is trying to keep up.

Part of Rome, a series.