Contrary to his usual practice of taking exposures which lasted several hours or even days, here Macpherson has used a short exposure to lay the blurring shadows across the building and allow the sun to light the objects in the metalworker's workshop. This offers us a picture, not so much of the grand Theatre of Marcellus, the obvious subject of the photograph, but of modern life, lived like a hermit crab in the grand surroundings of ancient Rome.