Trip Report: Italy & Venice: Within the Frame

This may seem like cheating, but I’m going to re-publish an article I wrote for a photography newsletter. The newsletter was born from an online photography forum which, while the site is still functional, is all but gone. The newsletter never really took off, with only 3 issues published, so not many people have had the opportunity to read this report. In the near future, I will also re-publish a similar article I wrote for the same newsletter, on my trip to Croatia.

TRIP REPORT: ITALY & VENICE: WITHIN THE FRAME

Originally published August 3, 2012 in Light Café Newsletter, Issue 3

I love participating in travel photography workshops. It’s an opportunity to explore new places with new friends who share a common passion for photography. I’m fortunate to have a very good friend who offers these types of workshops, and I am able to participate as his assistant. But this is not about one of his workshops.

In May of this year, I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop led by Jeffrey Chapman and David duChemin. I’ve followed David’s work for some time, and I really resonate with his style – not just his style of photography, but with his approach to photography as well.  Jeffrey’s work was new to me when I signed up, but I have grown to appreciate his photography and his approach as well.

This workshop, Venice: Within the Frame, is based in Venice (in case the title didn’t give it away 😉 ), but this story doesn’t start there. This story starts on Facebook of all places.

Months before the start of the workshop, Jeffrey created a private group on Facebook for the people who signed up. Through this group, we were able to chat, and start to get to know each other before we actually met in Venice for the first time. A few of us started chatting about Venice being a long way to travel for just one week. From that came the idea of meeting early, traveling by rail around other parts of Northern Italy, before landing in Venice on May 5th for the start of the workshop. And so it came to be that Ellie from Vancouver, Tim from Cleveland and myself from Ottawa decided to meet in Florence a full week before the workshop.

Three people, none of whom had ever met before, traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to a country that two of them had never been to before (Ellie had), knowing little about each other except that they all share a common passion for photography and travel. Wow! How scary is that!

As it turns out, there was no reason for it to be scary at all. Ellie and Tim are great people, and we all hit it off right away. We traveled together, photographed together, shared meals together, drank wine together (lots of wine!), and just had a great time. We have become very good friends, and I hope we get the chance to travel together again.

Florence

I arrived in Florence on the morning of April 30th, a couple of days after Tim and Ellie. I arrived at the hotel earlier than I expected, and a couple of hours before we were supposed to meet. My room wasn’t ready, but the hotel was willing to hold my bags until it was, so I grabbed my camera and went out for a walk by myself.

If you’ve never been to an old, European city, let me tell you, the narrow, cobblestone streets are a maze of twisty passages all alike! Within 10 minutes, I was completely lost. Within 30 minutes, I no longer saw tourists. For the next 60 minutes, I continued to wander the streets, finding myself in and out of the tourist area several times. Finally after 90 minutes, I decided it was time to buy a map. I found the hotel on the map, and it took me another 20 minutes to get back there, just in time to meet Ellie and Tim. 

The three of us met as a full group for the first time in the lobby of Hotel Machiavelli Palace, in the heart of the tourist area of Florence. My room was ready, so I checked in, dropped my bags and we headed out to find a restaurant for lunch. Conversation came very easily, and we started to learn about each other (including Tim and I both having a strong dislike for tomatoes – Ellie, enjoy that caprese salad, we’ll just eat the cheese). It become evident very early that this was going to work out very well.

For the next two days, we walked around Florence making photographs and enjoying the Italian food. We walked around the huge Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (aka The Duomo), the Ponte Vecchio (the only bridge in Florence not destroyed by the Germans during WWII), the markets, and the other sites of Florence.

On our last full day there, I checked The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE; iPhone/iPad app) and saw that if we went to the Ponte alle Grazie, the bridge directly east of Ponte Vecchio, the sunset would be directly over the Ponte Vecchio. Ellie and I headed there, with Tim planning to meet us a bit later. On the way, Ellie and I were distracted by reflections of The Duomo in the puddles on the cobblestone street, and we stopped to make some photographs. Once we started moving again, we walked past our turn, and went too far. We did finally make it to Ponte alle Grazie, but it was already a few minutes past sunset. It didn’t matter though, since clouds had moved in, and the sunset was a bust.

Ellie was disappointed, and wanted to move on, but I convinced her to wait to see what would come of it. After 20 minutes, blue hour started and we both were able to make some really nice photographs of the Ponte Vecchio. As for Tim, he turned the wrong direction, and ended up on the bridge on the other side of Ponte Vecchio (did I mention that the streets are very confusing?). We started texting each other, and finally met at The Duomo and then found a restaurant for a late dinner.

Sienna

After a 2 hour ride on the top of a double decker bus, we arrived in Siena. According to the guide books, the hotel we had booked was a short 15 minute walk from the bus station. Whoever wrote that either has very long legs, or their watch is broken! Dragging our luggage and our camera gear over the cobblestone streets, it was a good 30 minutes before we arrived at Locanda di Siena, but we got there and it was worth the walk. The rooms in Locanda di Siena are more like small apartments, each having a large bedroom as well as a separate sitting room with a couch, two chairs and a table.

We were early, and only one of our rooms was ready (Tim’s hot pink room), so we all dropped our bags there before heading to Piazza del Campo. 

Piazza del Campo is a pie-shaped medieval square where people like to lay on the brick, taking a break or soaking in the sun. To us, despite the absence of water, it came to be known as Siena Beach. One side is dominated by the Palazzo Pubblico (Town Hall). The semi-circular top of the square and the other side are lined with restaurant patios.

Siena is a smaller city than Florence, but has the same twisty, narrow passages and roadways. And for the truly adventurous, it has its own Museum of Torture.

After lunch at one of the restaurants on the edge of Piazza del Campo, we spent our day in Siena photographing the streets, the Siena Cathedral and the Church of Domenico.

San Gimignano

San Gimignano is a very small, walled city, about an hour from Siena by bus – an easy day trip. The narrow streets here are mostly devoid of cars, and lined primarily with tourist shops and a few small restaurants. And, in case you missed your opportunity in Siena, we counted 5 Museums of Torture in this very small city!

Most of the photographic interest in San Gimignano happens on the side streets, away from the masses of tourists. On these streets, we found windows lined by flower boxes, laundry hanging from windows and less crowded shops and restaurants. Outside one of these small shops, I found a beautiful, mid-sized dog. When I lowered to one knee to photograph him, he decided he would rather get a pat then have his picture taken. I was all too happy to oblige while Tim and Ellie looked on and photographed.

The most photographic part of San Gimignano though, is outside the walls. The countryside surrounding the city is beautiful, and goes on for miles. Captured in the right light, it is breathtaking.

After a late lunch at a restaurant off the main street, we took another walk through the main part of the city before heading outside the walls to catch our bus back to Siena.

Bologna

From Siena, we returned to Florence by bus, and then took a high-speed train to Bologna. Almost the entire trip from Florence to Bologna is inside tunnels, so if you ever take this trip, don’t be too concerned if you don’t get a window seat, there isn’t much to see.

Bologna is the largest, and most metropolitan city we visited in Italy. The streets are larger with more traffic, and the shops and restaurants are larger. Even the hotel we stayed in was a large, business class hotel rather than the small, almost B&B like hotels where we stayed in Florence and Siena. It was convenient though, being directly across the street from the train station, and we would only be here for one night.

In Bologna, we met Jay, an online friend of Ellie’s. Jay is an American photographer and writer who has been living in Italy for several months, and he offered to show us around.

From our hotel, we walked through a large park and then into a large market (jeans for €2!). On the other side of the market, we started entering the older part of the city center. Although we were in the old area, it still felt much larger and busier than the other cities we had visited so far.

We stopped for lunch at one of Jay’s favourite restaurants before heading out to wander the streets of Bologna.

With no particular destinations in mind, we weaved our way through the streets of Bologna, occasionally stepping into churches (at least the ones that allowed photography), the Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio and other public buildings to photograph. Although I am not the religious type, I still find the architecture and decor of old churches to be beautiful and worth visiting.

Slightly before sunset, we were back in the park near our hotel, waiting for the lights to turn on, so we could photograph them with the falling sun. The best photos of these lights however, turned out to be twilight against the blue-hour sky.

After blue-hour, we were all very tired from the morning travel and the walk around busy Bologna. Instead of finding a restaurant for dinner, we elected to grab some sandwiches from a deli and returned to our rooms for an early night. The next morning, we were back on the high-speed train, to finally make our way to Venice.

Venice

On May 5th, we arrived at the train station in Venice, where we would finally meet the rest of the Within the Frame workshop participants, as well as the organizers, David and Jeffrey.

David and Jeffrey were also arriving by train on the same day, along with Catherine, another participant in the workshop. Ellie was familiar with David from a previous trip, and was in contact with Catherine as well. Catherine and Ellie had texted each other, and we learned that their train would arrive just 15 minutes after ours, so we arranged to meet with them at the train station. This made finding our way to the hotel much easier (transportation in Venice is, understandably, a little different in Venice than anywhere else).

The six of us dragged our luggage on to the Venice version of a public bus (a large boat), which took us through the Grand Canal to our stop near Piazza San Marco. We disembarked, and followed Jeffrey down a very narrow “street” (they are not streets in the traditional sense, since there are no motorized vehicles allowed anywhere within the main part of Venice) to our hotel. Once again, we were in a small, B&B like hotel, and we were very happy about that.

I’ll discuss more about the workshop later, but the group met for our first group dinner on the first night. Europeans eat much later than we do in North America (many restaurants don’t even open until 7pm). After dinner, a few of us walked back to the hotel through Piazza San Marco. Piazza San Marco is so low that during high tides, the drains designed to take rain water from the square out to the Adriatic Sea actually backup and the square floods with sea water. This happened to be the night of the supermoon, so the tides were very high and the square was starting to flood. 

Tim, Ellie and I hurried back to the hotel, grabbed our cameras and tripods and went back to Piazza San Marco. By the time we got there, the water was high enough that there was no longer a dry path through the square. We photographed the reflections of Basilica di San Marco as well as the lights from the buildings around the basilica. By the time we were finished photographing and went back to the hotel to turn in, the water was several inches deep. There was water in the square the next couple of nights, but never as much as that first night. A uniquely Venice experience.

During the introduction to the workshop, we were encouraged to get lost in Venice. Well, Tim and I embraced that idea, maybe a little more then we intended. For three hours, we wandered through the streets of Venice, turning down alleys and crossing many bridges. Neither of us thought to bring a map, so we just walked towards anything that looked interesting. We found many squares and many dead ends, and made plenty of photographs along the way.

Entering one square, we saw a man draped in orange clothing and wearing an orange turban. From the distance we could only see a bit of him, but it was enough for Tim to get excited and start saying, “please let him be levitating, oh please let him be levitating!” I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, but once we walked around the tree planter that he was beside, I could see that he was sitting cross-legged and floating about 3 feet off the ground. We watched him for a few minutes, along with the rest of the crowd, but he just stayed, floating in his sitting position, barely moving and never saying a word. I put a euro in his bucket, and he silently handed me a piece of paper with some words in Italian. I later learned from Jeffrey that the paper said, “It takes a lifetime to understand that you do not have to understand everything.” I like that.

For the first few days, we continued on this routine – breakfast, image review, lunch and then explore Venice until it was time for dinner at 9pm. However, as this was the start of tourist season in Venice, the number of tourists on the streets increased with each day. Enormous cruise ships arrived daily, bringing thousands more into the city. By day 4, the city was becoming overwhelmed with the large number of visitors. Just walking through the narrow streets was slow and frustrating as we tried to weave through the crowds.

One of the most important skills for a photographer to have is to recognize and adapt to a situation. A few of us started getting up at 4am, exploring the city in the beautiful morning light before breakfast, resting after lunch, and then shooting again in the  evening and after dinner. At those times, the streets were navigable once again, and the types of photographs we could make were more varied.

Venice has a large fish market, which for those willing to get out of bed in the wee hours of the morning, makes for a great photographic opportunity. The vendors setting up the fish stalls don’t mind being photographed, provided you stay out of their way (and they have very large knives for those who don’t 😉 ). The seafood offer includes the usual fish, shrimp, and prawns. It also less common offerings such as shark, octopus, cuttlefish, squid and other creatures that I couldn’t identify. Setup begins at 5am, and by noon it will all be sold and the vendors will be hosing down their stalls.

On one afternoon, David and Jeffrey invited the group to join them for an Elliott Erwitt exhibit. It turned into the first group field trip.

Elliott Erwitt is  France-born photographer who emigrated to the United States as a child. Erwitt is an advertising and documentarian photographer, well known for his black & white photographs depicting funny or absurd situations set in everyday life. The exhibit was a collection of some of his best known work.

On another afternoon, David, Tim and I visited the island of Murano, famous for its glass sculpting. The main area of the island consisted of store after store of glass shops selling pieces ranging from small glass eggs, jewelry and figurines up to large, elaborate pieces of contemporary artwork costing thousands of euros.

For our second group field trip, we visited the island of Burano, one of the furthest islands that make up Venice, well known for its beautiful lace. Getting to Burano takes about 45 minutes and requires taking two boats, making it less popular and less overrun with tourists. The sidewalks are lined with 2 and 3 story residences that have all been brightly painted with reds, blues, yellows and greens.

Jeffrey talks about spending enough time in a place that you get bored of it, then you’ll know that you’ve experienced all it has to offer. I’m not sure that is possible with Venice. While you may get frustrated with the overwhelming crowds of tourists, this is different from being bored of the place. Venice has a lot to offer to those who are willing to put up with the crowds and just embrace the city for what it is. And I might remind you that, if you are a tourist in Venice, you have chosen to be a part of this first-world problem.

Within in the Frame Workshop

On May 5th, most of the workshop participants met in the small lobby of the hotel at 7pm. The last two, Claudia and Peter would meet the group the following morning. We moved into a small room where the formal introductions were done, and Jeffrey explained the logistics for the week.

David and Jeffrey run a very loose, organic workshop. There are no strict rules or plans. The group would meet daily at 10:30am for image discussion followed by a group lunch. There would also be a group dinner at 9pm each night (Europeans eat much later than North Americans, with many restaurants not opening until 7pm). All group meals and activities are optional, and if you  are not at the meeting place within 5 minutes of the meeting time, they would simply assume you found an interesting place to photograph. The rest of the time we were left to explore Venice on our own, and we were encouraged to get lost in the streets, something that is very easy to do.

The real value of this workshop comes during the image discussion sessions, led by David. These discussions are modeled after David’s 4th print book, “Vision and Voice.” Each day, participants are invited to offer a photograph for discussion. The first to speak up will display their photograph and each person will have an opportunity to examine it before the discussion begins. Discussion about a photograph is allowed to continue until no one has anything more to say. That may be 10 minutes, or for one of my photographs, it lasted for nearly an hour. David wanted us to point out and discuss every detail of the photograph, no matter how obvious, subtle or insignificant. He discouraged us from saying things like, “I like it,” or “I don’t like it.” David wanted us to identify the elements of the photograph and discuss how those elements contribute to the photograph (everything in a photograph contributes in some way, wanted or not).

The one rule of the image discussion is that the photographer is NOT allowed to speak – at all! There is no explaining or defending the photograph. Whatever the photographer is trying to say or show has to be said or shown by the photograph. This approach allows the photographer, who hopefully knows what they were trying to say with the photograph, can hear an unbiased discussion of what others are actually seeing. If the group is seeing what the photographer intended, then it is a successful photograph. If they are seeing something different, it may still be a good photograph, but it is not depicting what the photograph was trying to say. Hopefully through the discussion, the photographer will be able to identify how their message is being missed.

For me, this approach worked extremely well. I learned a lot about my photography and how it was being interpreted by others during these discussions. It has influenced how I think about a photograph at the time I am creating it.

Conclusion

For me travel is a great inspiration for photography, and photography is a great inspiration for travel. They go hand-in-hand. Workshops, such as Within the Frame, provide an opportunity to meet and travel with a group of like minded individuals, as well as the chance to learn and grow your chosen craft.

If you made it this far, thank-you for reading.