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Views of Venice

If you are like me, you take a lot of photographs. Professionally, certainly, but also when it’s just for fun. When coming home from a holiday, it’s not unusual for me to return with several SD cards filled to the brim with images. And then the ‘hard work’ begins. It takes time to sift through and edit up to 1500 images (Italy 2018), and it’s much less fun than taking them. Thus it happens that now (the end of January 2019) I’m finally finished selecting and editing the photographs from our holiday in September 2018. And that means: time to share some!

As even with a thorough first selection, some 700 images remain (I will cut this down to an even more rigorous selection later, for the customary photo-album), I will divide this holiday into sections, and start with Venice, where around a third of the images were taken. 

Venice is a photographers dream and nightmare all in one. It’s a magnificent place. Lots of old and impressive churches, buildings, bridges, canals, gondolas, lovely intimate squares … and a lot of tourists (myself included, of course). And the famous sights have all been done. The moving gondolas at the edge of Saint Mark’s square, the view of Saint Mark’s cathedral, the view of the Bridge of Sighs through the gaps in the bridge opposite (it’s hard to find a spot and take the time for your own photograph between all the selfie-stick wielding other tourists). It’s all been done, and shared online, by hundreds of other photographers, most better than myself.

The challenge is therefore to do something original. On the other hand, I’m there for fun, not for work, and if there are some cheesy photographs that have been done by hundreds of others, so what. Isn’t it still a challenge to make the same photograph as beautiful as I can make it? Below is therefore a mix of know places and images,  some that I consider more original, because the opportunity just appeared out of nowhere, and you maybe won’t find it on the instagram-pages of other photographers, and just some personal images that turned out nice. 

I’ve called this post ‘Views of Venice’, not just because the alliteration was nice, but because I intend to post a number of ‘Views of’ posts from placed I’ve visited, in the past and in the future. I hope you will enjoy the images as much as I enjoyed taking them! 

Just an ordinary holiday shot of the departure by Ferry at Punta Sabbioni, together with hundreds of other tourists, to Saint Mark’s square.
I guess this would fall under the description ‘it’s been done before’. The not so original view of the Bridge of Sighs. Still, it turned out quite nice, considering I had about 5 seconds before being hit on the head with a selfie stick and being shove aside by another tourist who decided I had been there long enough and his turn had come..
A more original shot of the Rialto Bridge than many, I think. I liked the combination of the sculpture, the pigeon and the gondolas.
Just a nice reflection on the way.
Trying to avoid the main road through the city, we tried this little alley, only to find that it was a dead end. It was a nice spot for a photograph though!
A view of an unoccupied gondola at Saint Mark’s square.
While having diner at a restaurant just far enough away from Saint Mark’s square not to be ridiculously overpriced, I noticed this still life with subtle reds.
I really liked this scene of my girlfriend photographing from the ferry pier. The red of the dress, the yellow of the lamps, and the blues of the water and sky made for a compelling image.
I really wanted to visit Venice at nice, and try to capture some sunset and blue hour images. Despite it being an overcast, misty and sometimes rainy day, our optimism was rewarded with this sunset.
THE cheesy image of Venice, the moving gondolas at Saint Mark’s square. Still, I quite liked how it turned out.
By just stabilising the camera to a wall, this image could be made with a rather low ISO and longer shutter speed.