This is a shot of the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. The basilica of St. Croce is the dominating structure.

As my wife and I toured the city late one afternoon, we happened by St. Croce and I stopped for a photo. I was struck by the dark cloud above the church and the couple walking away. It just seemed like an interesting composition. I suspect I stopped to take a photo of the church only (we didn't have time to tour in the inside, sadly), but this scene presented itself for just a few seconds. I grabbed it, then we had to move on.

Notice the low perspective? I squatted down for this shot.

Notice something else? The shutter speed is 1-stop below the sunny 16 rule, and sure enough, the photo was about 1-stop underexposed (as per the histogram). I lightened the image you see here in Photoshop.

What's the sunny 16 rule? Your shutter speed should be about 1/60 seconds when shooting in bright sunlight at f/16 and 100 iso.

In mid-April of 2004, my wife and I took a long vacation to Italy and Switzerland.
We stayed in Rome and Florence for a total of 6 days, and had a wonderful time.

This trip was my first serious outing with the Canon Digital Rebel. I used the kit
lens (18-55mm) about 90% of the time and it did well! I used mostly f/8 for DOF
and sharpness, and I kept it at ISO at 100 for smaller file sizes (shooting JPGs)
and minimum noise.