Thanks for your remarks... I guess I must be doing something good then. :-) I must admit that I spent a lot more time thinking about the shots (composition, manual operation of the camera, checking the results, ...) and it certainly paid off. I also see that the "RAW" quality setting is far superior to the JPEG-compression when the photo's come out of the camera (vivid colours, sharpness, detail, ...) So, I learned something, i think. bsteph, the "scaffolding" in the last pic is meant to be there; it's an old gas silo (or how do you call these things ?); I thougt it would be a nice contrasting feature (kind of "black lace"), but I saw another flaw : maybe the campanile is too centered in the composition. So, I'll play aroud a bit with this one. zardoz, I fully agree with all your remarks. I didn't want to touch the photos in PS before posting them here. I'll work on them some more and then I'll let you see the result. Misha, I like very much what you did to that photo. Very "artzy". I guess I'll have to install that old "Painter" program again and do some experimenting of my own. Very inspiring stuff !!!