Venice. Where do I start?

With some pictures since I know reading what some boring twat has to say can be… well… boring. Whilst in Venice I developed an inexplicable obsession with panoramic photographs. Click on any of these to big-ify them.

I have mixed feelings about these panoramic photos but I’m all about the sharing.

Venice is an easy city to photograph. Quite simply, everywhere you turn, there is a feast for the eyes, architecture, canals, bridges; it’s easy to get overloaded. However, Venice is a very difficult city to photograph well. What I mean by this is that it’s very hard to take a photograph that captures the atmosphere and the emotion that triggered the urge to take the photo in the first place.

I’ve found myself rejecting 19 out of 20 photos I took whilst I was there, as I simply don’t get any particular emotional response from them. I’ll share the ones I did like, as I walk you through our time in Venice.

We finally arrived at around 22:30 in the evening, desipte easyjet’s efforts to stop us going with yet another delayed flight. Our transport options were limited, so one Water Taxi ride later we are dropped off on the Grand Canal, right outside our hotel door, stepping from the boat onto a jetty seen here on the left here about half way along;

It’s too late to do much but have a drink in the hotel bar. One or two people warned me that Venice is expensive. I struggle to understand how they can say this – Venice isn’t expensive – it’s absurd. Expect to pay upwards of £7 for a 330cl bottle of beer. It makes the West End of London look positively thrifty. After a couple of drinks we head off to bed.

The next day arrives and we have our first opportunity to experience Venice proper. We head off on foot for the Basilica di San Marco – everyone says this is a must, so we’re keen to get it in on the first day. On the way we can immediately see why everyone makes such a fuss about Venice. Around every corner, there is a sight you wont see anywhere else in the world: Houses with their front door on a canal or accessed over tiny little picturesque bridges. Down a small back alley and suddenly you are in a grand square with an even grander Church overlooking it – around the next corner you enter a dark alley and wonder if you’ve hit a dead end, only to find yourself stood on a small but beautiful bridge over a canal with brightly coloured houses all around you.

For all of it’s beauty though, Venice is a city in decay. Facades crumble away wherever you turn and for every building under construction, or more accurately renovation, hundreds more lie neglected. It can’t escape notice that every single piece of architecture is simliar – all thoroughly beautiful but all trapped in the past with no-where to go. At best, it will be maintained as it currently is, but you only have to walk for two minutes to know this doesn’t seem realistic. Your heart sees the rustic charm – your head wonders how deep the apparently superficial decay really goes.

What do I know though? Venice has survived for hundreds of years, and will no doubt continue to do so. Graffiti is rife everywhere; It seems the residents of the city need a voice, and that voice is expressed in the form of incomprehensible graffiti – at least for a non Italian speaker. Although it’s pretty easy to understand the sentiment here:

Around another corner and suddenly we’re at the Ponte de Rialto – one of only three bridges over the grand canal, and easily the most famous. We would later on in the holiday stop at this very spot for a delicious seafood lunch:

We cross the bridge, and take in some of the shops selling typical Venetian tourist fare – Murano glass and ornate masks dominate. Holiday spending fever grips and you start to think one of these would make a good present for someone back home. Sanity prevails as we ask ourselves two questions – who and why?

Finally after about an hour of walking we arrive at St Mark’s square, and the Basilica di San Marco. This is without doubt the busiest tourist spot I’ve ever visited. Literally hordes of people swarming all over the place mean taking a photo without 100 japanese tourists or schoolchildren in it is impossible.

Unless you want photos of random tourists, you are stuck taking detail shots. I took loads, and rejected them all except this one, which I find oddly appealing.

Once we’ve hit St Mark’s square, and toured the Basilica (which sadly doesn’t allow photography, but is an incredible place), we simply strike out in one direction and see where it takes us. I fire off a huge number of photographs, and my beautiful wife remains patient throughout.

For our first evening meal, we decide to eat on the grand canal, but it’s a total washout both literally (due to the pouring rain) and figuratively, due to the average food and service and more absurd Venice pricing.

Day two dawns and it’s raining – we eat breakfast and as luck would have it, by the time we head out it’s stopped raining. This would not remain the case as it rained on and off all day, and we got quite simply drenched to the bone.

St Mark’s square acts like a magnet as foot traffic all seems to flow in that direction – we find ourselves there again in one of the dry periods we are able to stop for a drink. This is what a 12.50 euro bottle of Guiness looks like, backed with the Palazzo Ducale.

The rain finally lets up and we enjoy an evening walking around a drying city. I proceed to take a bunch of long exposure photos whilst Abby stands patiently by waiting for me.

For the rest of the holiday it’s more of the same, which is nothing to complain about. On the last day, the weather holds and is warm, we eat our most delicious meal within inches of the Grand Canal resisting the temptation to dip our feet in.

We walk for miles, taking in as much of the city as we can, and stopping for a few cheesy photos on the way.

Eventually though we run out of time, so another Water Taxi takes us back to the airport.

At the airport we experience the most dreadful check in experience imaginable, waiting almost 4 hours to get checked in. Since we’re stood in a queue for half this time, it’s worse still than our 5 hours at Bristol Airport but with the blessed relief being that the flight isn’t canceled this time.

My final thoughts on Venice – it’s well worth a trip, but expect to spend a fortune. A meal for two with a couple of drinks will probably set you back 100 euro. Drinks vary between 5 and 15 euro each.

But when the dust settles it’s totally worth it making memories that will last a lifetime.

I continue to avoid sorting through several hundred photos of Venice, this time by going out for a walk with Wilf the dog and two of his friends Baggins and George.

I’ve written here before about Wilf’s neurotic character traits. He’s been examined and observed by a number of vets and dog psychology experts who have diagnosed his excessive obsessive tail chasing as various things such as epilepsy, and come up with various ways to cure him – none of which have worked. Fortunately with some recent work his tail chasing seems to be getting better, which is promising.

He’s also been diagnosed as exhibiting “extreme fear” when taken on a walk, which results in him not wanting to get out of the car, or leave the house unless it’s to get in a car. All this leaves Wilf as a bundle of pure energy (typical of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed) who gets little or no exercise.

When the opportunity to walk him with other dogs arises, it’s always worth a try – he seems less fearful when other dogs are around to take the lead (pardon the pun).

Here’s a rare photo of Wilf enjoying the great outdoors:

After the walk, we take Baggins and George back to my studio and attempt to get them to sit still for five minutes so I can photograph them. Once again I had issues with the optical triggers on the Vivitar flashes – you would think I would have learned by now and given up.

Meet Baggins:

Baggins is the Brother of Bailey and Simba, who I photographed a couple of years ago – back before Wilf had developed the worst of his current psychological traits.

And this is George, who lives with Baggins:

Two dogs at once is difficult in the extreme – I hoped to get a photo of them together but all my efforts were in vain. Sit still you buggers!!!

When I do eventually process and post my pictures from Venice, you’ll see I’ve developed an apparent obsession with panoramic photos. This seems to have continued after my return, with this one resulting from the walkies with the doggies.

Click on it for a larger version, go on, you know you want to.

I’m back from holidays and slogging through several hundred photos trying to obtain some sort of order from it all, so decided I’d take a break and share a picture I took before I left. My buddy Sami is selling his car, and wanted some nice pictures of it before it was gone. I couldn’t promise they’d be nice, but I said I would give it a go. I’d planned this shoot in detail using my new notebook approach and was only missing a location.

Cue an hours frenized driving around looking for somewhere interesting. It did highlight the issue that planning a shoot is all very well but if you don’t know where you are going to do it in the first place, it’s all a bit pointless.

Anyway, onto the results. I had terrible problems with the optical triggers for my Vivitars – they simply wouldn’t work reliably. Or to put it more bluntly, they were utter utter shite. One flash would constantly fire on it’s own, whilst the other only fired one time out of every five or six attempts. Clearly the optical triggers need to go, they are are no good outside of a studio. In spite of this I got the static shot I wanted. I’m not totally happy with it, but equipment failings are the main cause of this unhappiness.

The only other image I wanted to get was a car to car tracking shot – this worked less well for two key reasons;

1.) I had to push to ISO 800 to get the shutter time I wanted – this caused a lot of noise which I hate.
2.) The boot of my Ignis is not a nice place to be whilst driving over bumpy ground. I was too busy concentrating on not falling out to be able to give enough attention to the shots I was taking. I’ll share the picture here if only to illustrate my points.

Despite these problems, I’m confident my new approach to shooting cars is really helping to improve the results I’m getting. on to the next car which will depend on which of my friends I can convince to stand around for an hour whilst I mess around taking photos!

When the bartender at the airport bar says “are you still here?”  You know something has gone badly wrong with your holiday…

As I write this, I should be walking the streets of historic Venice, lapping up the culture, the sights, the architecture (and the booze).

Instead I’m sat in my dingy office at home bemoaning the state of the world. It goes something like this;

We arrive at Bristol International Airport full of that optimistic buzz you always get when you are about to go on holiday. We line up with all the other various folks either skipping and twittering, happy that they are off to sunnier and more relaxing climes – or trudging and dragging a case knowing they are going home.

Our turn at the check-in and the sloping foreheaded drone behind the counter cheerfully informs us our flight is delayed 3 hours. I refrain from speaking my mind at this point. It can’t be the weather, because when we arrived it looked like this;

5 hours pass in a haze of bad bad takeaway food, and ludicrously expensive beer and wine. For a time the weather turns towards the worrying – snowstorms hit.

But departs as quickly as it arrives. Finally we are called to our gate for boarding. Where we wait.

And wait….

And are told to wait just 15 minutes more for an announcement.

It’s hard not to notice the conspicuous arrival of airport police at the gate, just a short moment prior to the announcement. Expecting trouble are we?

So there it is, the squawking tannoy voice informs us that the flight has been canceled, because easyjet can’t find a crew for the plane. Did you look down the back of the sofa for one? Did you not realise the plane would need a crew before you called us to the gate, after making us wait FIVE HOURS? You total, total arseholes.

“Please proceed to the easyjet helpdesk for more information, and a brain aneurysm bought on through pure distilled airport rage.”

Airport rage is (thankfully) unique in that it’s on the whole utterly impotent, and pointless. The monosyllabic and infuriatingly un-apologetic cretin behind the counter doesn’t care about you – and can’t help you by virtue of being at the bottom of both the easyjet food ladder, and apparently also the gene pool.

So we find ourselves at home, and having been refunded for our entire holiday without any undue fuss or hassle, and without me needing to “express myself” on the phone to the queasyjet helpliner. We’ve re-booked and actually saved money on the re-booking. These are small, but welcome mercies.

Now I’m off to unpack my suitcase.