Enough with the whinging, I promise. I am really having a great time. I am talking to people and, I think, taking some great photos. I am just now starting to find my groove. I am feeling less overwhelmed with the density of interesting stuff, and beginning to compose with it.
And how, you may ask, am I making out with the digital camera? It is a useful instrument for loosening up my eye. I find myself starting the day just with the digital, then hauling out the tripod and the wide camera when I’m warmed up.
It’s been a useful icebeaker too. I showed a gondolier the shot I had just taken of the prow of his boat, and it started a long conversation about his work. “The fronts are all different,” he told me. “Every boat, their own.” January is the traditional vacation month for his kind, but the weather was nice this day, and he was seeing if he could pick up a ride or two. “I worked on a yacht for awhile, but I didn’t like it. I came back to this. I am my own boss. It is much better.” He styled the shot for me – “Here, let me make it nice,” – by splashing water on the rich black wood. I arranged him in his boat and made some portraits.
This one was obviously doing well—he was easy-going and confident. He wore a small diamond stud in his earlobe. Many of the gondoliers around the city look morose and desperate. One told me, “No work. Is hard.” You could see the small black cloud just above his straw hat with the red ribbon.
A few more surface observations. As Paris is the city of women with small dogs, Venice is the city of men and their little dogs. Unlike Paris, where the dog is practically a fashion accessory (often carried in a handbag), here the dogs trail their owners, off leash, often several yards behind. There is hardly an espresso bar without a dog in attendance (like England and its pubs, come to think of it. Their dogs are bigger though.). As with Paris, it is a good idea to keep a sharp eye out for where you step.
Italians dress much better than anyone else. The young women are done to death, and the old women are mostly wrapped in beautiful fur coats. I walk slowly down the lanes, ever alert for the stacatto click-click of high heels behind me, warning me to get out of the way. The men too, young ones particularly, look like they just stepped out of a fashion spread. Everyone looks gorgeous. It is easy to spot the tourists. They’re not gorgeous. They’re also looking at a map. Fruitlessly, I might add.
Fully a third of the population of Italy is talking on a cell phone at any given moment.
There is a disturbing amount of grafitti on the walls. Some look political, but a lot are merely tags. In the beginning I was going to great effort to excise it from my shots (plaza view with big bold tag on the front of the church—oh well), but I think I’m over that. Now they’re becoming parts of the composition.
Which suggests that I’m through one phase of photography and well into the next. Early on I had to document the images of Venice that I brought with me—canal view with gondola, that sort of picture. Now I am establishing an interesting series of shapes in the frame—news kiosk with tags, decaying church wall, bank of telephones—and waiting for the people, or the pigeons, to complete the shot. There, that man in the black coat talking on his phone, when the woman with the stroller reaches that other point, and if he stays still—that sort of waiting out the shot. Twice today the critical element has been a loose dog. The best part is that I get to stand for long periods of time in one spot, and take in all the details.
So it is well into a fruitful, creative trip. It will be hell to caption the take though—I never have a clue where I am.
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