Gondolas at San Marco, Venice
Fujifilm GFX100S, GF20-35mm, f8 @ 2 seconds, ISO 80.

The headline for this newsletter is a little biased towards Australians. For more worldly readers, obviously this is not the Venetian opera house, rather a couple of dingies bobbing around in a Venetian canal. The reference is for Sydney's Opera House which is a subject every visitor photographs, and my rhetorical question queries whether these poor gondolas are photographed by every tourist in Venice.

The answer is probably yes. And more often than not, if you visit this location in the evening you'll find a string of tripods set up, waiting for the perfect whatever it is they are looking for. And there's nothing wrong with that!

As a travel photographer, there's an element of ticking things off. On my trips through Italy last year, I photographed a lot of well-photographed and over-photographed locations. Why bother? Why copy what has already been done before? Why not look for something new and different?

Well, hopefully on my travels I have also found lots of new and different things, angles and ideas, but if I'm going to produce a body of work that talks about Sydney or Venice, it makes sense to include a few popular references to ensure your audience is on board. There's no doubt this famous photograph screams Venice!

It was overcast and drizzling on this evening. We waited for the light to drop and the lights on the wharves to turn on, but the overall exposure remained drab and dull. That's what post-production is for! Lightening up the exposure gives us access to more colour in the lighter tones. I added reds to the distant buildings to drag the viewer's attention through the foreground and out to the background. I dropped in a little green under the gondolas and added a little gold to the lights. The overall golden colour cast comes from the street lights behind me.

When framing the photo, I was careful to keep the tower (campanile) in the background separate from the gondola poles in the foreground. And I added a texture overlay and the curved frame is because the photo is part of a series and all the images are similarly treated. (And if you don't like it, don't bother to let me know as your complaints will fall upon deaf ears - I do!)

If nothing else, most people will recognise the location and hopefully the treatment enjoyable. Personally I enjoy the two pairs, the two gondolas and the two lights. There's a nice balance, I think.

And if you're interested in seeing more of this series of photos, I have a 100-page ePortfolio available for sale on the on website. It's titled Wanderings - I'm trying something new! You can see more details by clicking here.