Stadio Olimpico, seen from Tribuna Monte Mario

The Stadio Olimpico is not an easy subject to photograph, especially when seen from the lofty and privileged perch of the Tribuna Monte Mario. The vantage point offers grandeur, but grandeur doesn’t always translate easily into pixels—especially under the kind of merciless lighting that the stadium seems to favour at night.

From this spot, the sweeping geometry of the roof dominates the composition. Its repeating, honeycomb-like pattern glows under the sodium vapour lights, casting a heavy golden hue that floods the upper half of the frame. Below, the seating—empty and rendered in cool blues—acts as a counterweight, both in tone and texture. The effect is a split visual dialogue between warm and cold, manufactured light and painted colour.

Technically, this was a battle from the first click. The Panasonic TZ-100, a compact camera with commendable reach, is not a low-light powerhouse. High ISO was unavoidable, introducing a visible grain that I decided to keep rather than crush in noise reduction. The original capture looked flat, with shadows eating into detail and the highlights from the floodlights blowing out sections of the roof. The only viable solution was unapologetically heavy post-production—pulling shadows, taming highlights, and pushing colour saturation to a point that edges into the unreal.

The result sits somewhere between photograph and graphic rendering. Purists might balk at the intervention, but the truth is that this image reflects how the place felt in the moment more than how it appeared to the naked eye: oversized, theatrical, and bathed in an almost operatic light. Sometimes the camera records reality; other times it records the experience. This was one of the latter.