Though I found the Spanish Steps to be a tad underwhelming compared to everything else we had seen so far, I found that I had learned a lot of valuable skills while shooting there during photography class. We focused specifically on using mixed lighting (a combination of the use of a flash and the sun) and adjusting our cameras for high contrast scenes. First, we learned how to meter for the highlights, then the shadows, and then we learned how to fill in a scene’s shadows with a flash. This short crash course in mixed lighting was largely a review for me since I had some light experience with using mixed lighting for portraiture, but it ended up being good practice and pushed me out of my comfort zone a bit when it came to bringing mixed lighting to the street. After learning the basics of using the flash, Professor Bick sent us off to photograph interesting strangers in the sea of people that populated the Spanish Steps and the plaza beneath. Though I was perfectly comfortable with subtly photographing strangers (that’s basically what street photography is), photographing them with a bright flash is a whole different beast. Though the assignment was daunting, the experience brought quite an adrenaline rush. Eventually, I found my groove and became comfortable zipping through the crowd and bringing my camera and flash up to individuals that caught my eye, but just as soon as I got too comfortable, I got too bold and happened to photograph the wrong woman. She turned around as I passed her and started yelling at me. Thankfully, I calmed her down by apologizing and explaining that I was just a photography student. Even though I successfully defused the situation, the interaction totally threw me off for the rest of the afternoon and my photos suffered as a result. There are, however, a few that I was happy with, which are pictured below.