Here comes the sun...
Venice, Italy
I was going to write about imagery, Flickr and social media on my follow-up to yesterday's posting but I had such a good response from Explore that I thought I would save those thoughts for another day and continue with the morning shoot at the Accademia bridge. The bridge was packed all along its length with photographers waiting for that golden hour and sunrise which incidentally was scheduled for 6:46am according to my Ephemeris timetable.
My first snap was taken at 5:50am and I wondered how many I would personally take during this shoot as the sound of camera shutters constantly clicked around me. The guy next to me on my right (had squeezed in between me and the first photographer to arrive at the bridge - the cheek of it!) had some serious kit - Nikon D810 with power pack, a bigger, better lens (lens envy creeping in there) and a camera frame that allowed him to swap between landscape and portrait orientation simply by sliding this frame into a base plate on his tripod without any adjustment - neat, but I digress from the story.
As with all of my morning adventures on this holiday, the sunrise didn't materialise yet again and refused to show itself from behind the left side buildings. The official sunrise time came and went and so did most of the photographers on the bridge including the American party who were clearly on a mission to capture Venice in a day!
I decided to stick around, mainly because I hadn't thought beyond this shoot and breakfast wasn't until 8am and besides I didn't want to go back and wake Mrs R up for a third time (three strikes and you're out is a general rule in our household). The photographer next to me was still setup and taking shots on an almost time-lapse basis. I thought.. if he still thinks something might materialise I might as well stick around also. I broke the silence and asked him if he was a professional in order to strike up a conversation. It transpired he was also an American on holiday and was kind of a "semi-pro" as he still worked for a living but had a secondary income via Getty Images.
Suddenly, he broke off in mid-sentence and started shooting at a more feverish rate... I looked to see what had caught his eye. We had both watched the blue hour come and go leaving a rather pale orange featureless sky as the backdrop to our Grand Canal and Salute scene. But now the sun was just ever so sneakily peaking around the buildings and illuminating buildings along the canal. I too started clicking away as the light and illumination ventured up the canal towards us. Traffic was now freely meandering about the canal and randomly reflecting the light on their painted and lacquered hulls. Half a dozen frames later and the early morning light was gone. Clearly my fellow photographer felt the scene had played to its conclusion for he quickly packed up and left me all alone as the sole photographer on the bridge.
The whole morning experience had lasted 1 hr 26mins and I had only taken 34 images over that time frame. I suspect there are several thousand images on hard drives around the world from the 30+ photographers that jostled for position on that bridge, but only two of us captured this delayed after glow. I took a couple of extra frames and I too departed...
Here comes the sun...
Venice, Italy
I was going to write about imagery, Flickr and social media on my follow-up to yesterday's posting but I had such a good response from Explore that I thought I would save those thoughts for another day and continue with the morning shoot at the Accademia bridge. The bridge was packed all along its length with photographers waiting for that golden hour and sunrise which incidentally was scheduled for 6:46am according to my Ephemeris timetable.
My first snap was taken at 5:50am and I wondered how many I would personally take during this shoot as the sound of camera shutters constantly clicked around me. The guy next to me on my right (had squeezed in between me and the first photographer to arrive at the bridge - the cheek of it!) had some serious kit - Nikon D810 with power pack, a bigger, better lens (lens envy creeping in there) and a camera frame that allowed him to swap between landscape and portrait orientation simply by sliding this frame into a base plate on his tripod without any adjustment - neat, but I digress from the story.
As with all of my morning adventures on this holiday, the sunrise didn't materialise yet again and refused to show itself from behind the left side buildings. The official sunrise time came and went and so did most of the photographers on the bridge including the American party who were clearly on a mission to capture Venice in a day!
I decided to stick around, mainly because I hadn't thought beyond this shoot and breakfast wasn't until 8am and besides I didn't want to go back and wake Mrs R up for a third time (three strikes and you're out is a general rule in our household). The photographer next to me was still setup and taking shots on an almost time-lapse basis. I thought.. if he still thinks something might materialise I might as well stick around also. I broke the silence and asked him if he was a professional in order to strike up a conversation. It transpired he was also an American on holiday and was kind of a "semi-pro" as he still worked for a living but had a secondary income via Getty Images.
Suddenly, he broke off in mid-sentence and started shooting at a more feverish rate... I looked to see what had caught his eye. We had both watched the blue hour come and go leaving a rather pale orange featureless sky as the backdrop to our Grand Canal and Salute scene. But now the sun was just ever so sneakily peaking around the buildings and illuminating buildings along the canal. I too started clicking away as the light and illumination ventured up the canal towards us. Traffic was now freely meandering about the canal and randomly reflecting the light on their painted and lacquered hulls. Half a dozen frames later and the early morning light was gone. Clearly my fellow photographer felt the scene had played to its conclusion for he quickly packed up and left me all alone as the sole photographer on the bridge.
The whole morning experience had lasted 1 hr 26mins and I had only taken 34 images over that time frame. I suspect there are several thousand images on hard drives around the world from the 30+ photographers that jostled for position on that bridge, but only two of us captured this delayed after glow. I took a couple of extra frames and I too departed...