After a long, rainy day touring the Vatican, my wife and I were rewarded with this view from atop St. Peter's. I had to wait for about 15 minutes to get this shot due to the hoards of other tourists standing around enjoying the view.

I held the camera (in portrait orientation) firmly against the stone wall that rings the cupola and took this photo. It was way too crowded to use a tripod, and I had to act quickly because there were so many people up there. It was a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, and I had to almost fight my way to the front to see this view.

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.