Well, I know it is a little unkind to my gardening friends but I had to share this picture of a greenfly and its progeny. Purely in the interests of enjoying their colour against the tulip, of course. Come on, admit it, the babies are just a tiny bit cute?
The coffee bar conversation
Last month I enjoyed putting my new street pal, the Fuji X-E1, through its paces during a lunchtime stroll around Belgravia.
Iconic
Street photography is a very different genre from my usual fare, but I am enjoying dabbling in it.
In the Arcade
I love it that with the X-E1 I can snap away without people noticing. I am even beginning to shoot from the hip, and sometimes I get a passable shot that way.
Lunch with the boys
I love the contrasts you get in London, like working lads taking a lunch break under a designer advert with a distinctly effete-looking model.
Put That Phone Away!
Perhaps it helps with the stealth shooting that everyone is too busy looking at his/her phone to notice me!
Wexting or Telking?
Finally, some Summer weather. The damselflies made the most of it – there were several pairs of these red damselflies mating in my garden yesterday.
I had a bit of fun putting some of my Burano shots together to make this image. I love that place.
A shot from last year of a rosemary beetle. These relatively recent arrivals in the UK may be pretty but they wreak havoc in the garden, especially the herb border. One shouldn’t anthropomorphise but I can’t help interpreting this one’s expression as more belligerent than guilty. Perhaps it is thinking of Princess Anne’s famous riposte:
You are a pest, by the very nature of that camera in your hand.
When there’s a high tide, St. Mark’s Square, the lowest part of Venice, tends to flood. What is no doubt an inconvenient and costly problem for the city is a photo-opportunity for the visitor.
The plague doctor
I am sure I have told you before that I am most definitely not a street photographer. But it is a genre that I admire. It is good to challenge oneself every now and then so, during our recent trip to Venice, I turned my new lightweight toy, the Fuji X-E1, on the people.
The market seller
Venice is such a super city for people watching.
The coffee breaker
I do like black and white for this kind of photography.
The dog and art lover
The not impressed
The lunchtime debaters
The reader
The friendly listener
The story teller
The taxi hailer (and antique camera-owner)
The lawkeepers
The heavy lifters
The master craftsman
Venice is such a visual feast. Once you have done with the watery vistas, the colourful reflections, and the people, there is still delight to be had in the smaller details.
Sometimes the more crumbling parts are almost more rewarding than the well maintained. For a while you might be tempted to try to get all the verticals and horizontals in your photos just right until you realise that they were never straight anyway.
I wonder why photographers love the dilapidated so much?
“Il y a, à Venise, trois lieux magiques et secrets : l’un dans la “rue de l’amour des amis”, le deuxième près du “pont des merveilles” et le troisième dans le “sentier des marranes”, près de San Geremia, dans le vieux ghetto. Quand les Vénitiens – parfois ce sont les Maltais – sont fatigués des autorités, ils vont dans ces lieux secrets et, ouvrant les portes au fond de ces cours, ils s’en vont pour toujours vers des pays merveilleux et vers d’autres histoires…”
― Hugo Pratt, Corto Maltese: Fable De Venise
A selection of bug macros taken this spring in my garden.
This is the last in my series about the colourful Italian island of Burano.
I am not a street photographer and none of these shots would even begin to qualify as decent candid portraits, but they are the best I could manage, awkwardly trying not to be noticed as I furtively snatched an image or two.
I wonder what it is like living on a tiny island where every day the day trippers vastly outnumber the inhabitants.
Do the locals heave a hearty sigh of relief when the late afternoon’s long shadows see the departure of the last vaporetto and the colourful streets no longer echo with the babble of multiple foreign tongues?
Tourism and the sale of intricate lace, to tourists, are the principal/only industries on Burano so the relationship with the tourists must necessarily be one of polite encouragement. Certainly we didn’t feel any animosity. But it must be a strange existence.
Tourism websites are rather coy on the question of the origins of the tradition for colourful houses. They seem to agree that it began during the middle ages and had something to do with distinguishing dwellings from each other. Apparently the colours follow a well-established pattern and if one wants to paint one’s house one must apply to the government who will then provide a list of permitted colours.
I leave you with a few more shots of the colourful island.
Pure draughtsmen are philosophers and dialecticians. Colourists are epic poets. (Charles Baudelaire)
The picture will have charm when each colour is very unlike the one next to it. (Leon Battista Alberti)
Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration. (Marc Chagall)
Focused Moments 