17 Rio Pesaro, Venice

In the nineteenth century, slow exposure times made photography under low-light conditions nearly impossible. To compensate, some photographers used color to transform daylight scenes into romantic nocturnes. In this clever day-for-night image, Salviati, a commercial photographer in Venice, applied a cerulean wash to a view of a winding canal, adding a painted moon in the sky above and sparkling reflections of gas lamps in the water below.