The main artery of Venice’s beating heart is the Grand Canal. Its embankment is lined with opulent palazzi perched tenuously on a multitude of wooden poles driven into the clay seabed. Their imbued personalities mirrored in elegant symmetrical facades of arches and delicate colonnades.

The quartet of palazzi featured in this image are:

Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne,
Built in the 13th century and redesigned in the 1690s by Antonio Gaspari.

Ca’ Pesaro,
Designed by Domenico Rossi and commissioned by the Pesaro family, the palazzo dates back to 1724.

Ca’ Corner della Regina,
Initially designed by Giuseppe Sardi, the palace was reconstructed in 1724 by Domenic Rossi.

Ca’ Vendramin Calergi,
It was built by the early renaissance architect Mauro Codussi in the 15th century.

The image is a composite of four separate images of the palazzi and a sky image photographed the previous day. I intentionally set out to photograph the architecture under the soft lighting of an overcast sky, as it would assist in post-processing. In Photoshop, starting with a blank canvas regarding highlights and shadows gave me the flexibility to create uniform lighting throughout the image. Colour grading was done in Camera Raw, and the final tweaks in Nik Color Efex Pro. The picture was time-consuming, and I felt like each palazzo had become an old friend towards the end.