I took this photo in Venice, on my first trip to Italy in 2001.
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Venice is an amazing place. Sure, it’s hyped up, but for me it lived up to the hype and then some. It is pedestrian-oriented and there is something amazing and interesting around every corner of the maze-like warren of streets and canals. It buzzes with activity, but even though many of the people you see are tourists, there is a definite local atmosphere if you just head a few steps off the main tourist strips. Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square) is of course as far on the tourist strip as it’s possible to get, but this also makes it a colourful and fascinating place. It gleams at night with lights and people and sounds – it’s something to just immerse yourself in.
I took my Canon T70 35mm film camera on this trip, with a small selection of lenses and a cheap aluminium tripod. I am very glad I took the tripod, because I took quite a few shots at night, requiring slow shutter speeds – this being one of them. Being film, I had to estimate the exposure with a bit of help from the camera’s light meter and then hope that the pictures turned out okay when I got home and had them developed.
I set up behind the tables at this cafe, aiming at Basilica San Marco on the right, and the opera singer with small group of musicians on the cafe stage at left. The photo turned out better than I hoped. I like the blur of the moving people in the square, which adds some of that atmosphere of activity which you feel when really there.
I scanned the digital image from a print of the negative. This is one of my most viewed photos online. A while back I was contacted by the Victorian Department of Education (from the Australian state of Victoria), who requested permission to reproduce this photo in an exam paper. Since it was for educational purposes, I granted them permission, and they sent me a copy of the paper. It appeared in a geography paper, with questions about the use of land and buildings in this area.
This is not actually my favourite photo from that trip to Italy. Maybe I’ll tell the story of that one another day.