Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
One thing that never seems to be far away in Venice is a view down a narrow canal bordered on each side by interesting and colourful buildings. Here are four such views.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold & Colorplus (last two pictures). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
Bacino Orseolo is a gondola station in Venice, jus a minute away from St Mark’s Square. There were a steady stream of gondolas arriving and departing as we walked through, carrying tourists on rides propelled by the gondoliers in their distinctive striped shirts.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
This was one of those brief moments where a shot briefly appears before your eyes. The shape of the buildings, the people resting by the fountain, and the man in the bright yellow shirt striding across the campo. Seconds later other groups of people had wandered into the frame, cluttering the scene, and removing the sense of space and heat that this picture says to me.
Quite often I miss those chances, those decisive moments, as Henri Cartier Bresson famously said. I think I got a nice picture here though.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
There was something in the jumble of white buildings, cluttered windows, and the bands of water and sky that appealed here. The classy looking powerboat adds a splash of additional warm colour at the bottom.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
Two photographs of bridges in Venice today. There are probably other famous bridges in Venice, but these are the two that immediately spring to mind.
The first is the Bridge of Sighs which connects the interrogation chambers in the Doge’s Palace to the New Prison. It is so named because the view of Venice from the windows of the covered bridge would be the last sight of the outside that convicts would see, and they would sigh wistfully before being taken to their cells.
If prisoners were to cross the bridge today, they would witness dozens of tourists (such as I) taking photographs of the bridge from the next one along.
The second bridge is the Rialto Bridge, a spectacular crossing across the width of the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal is spanned by just three other bridges other than this one.
The Rialto Bridge was completed in 1591, replacing an earlier wooden bridge dating to 1251 (which itself had replaced the first crossing – a floating pontoon bridge – from 1181). Similar to the wooden bridge that came before, the current stone built bridge has two rows of shops on its span.
It was difficult to find a good vantage point to capture the bridge in it’s entirety, especially with the Trip 35’s fixed focal length, but I quite like this picture with the colourful mooring poles in the foreground.
The final picture is the southerly view along the Grand Canal from atop the bridge’s arch.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
This tower is one of those that doesn’t look as big in pictures but which is huge when you get up close and personal. On my last visit to Venice I went up to the viewing balcony (without my wife, who isn’t keen on heights), but this time I just admired it from its base and the surrounding area.
I didn’t realise until recently that the tower completely collapsed in 1902 and the tower in place today was completed in 1912.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
This was one of the first photographs I took after getting of the boat to Venice. The canal is the Rio del Greci and the tower is the campanile bell tower of San Giorgio dei Greci (or Saint George of the Greeks, in English).
The foundations of the tower collapsed due to subsidence during the building phase, resulting in the leaning tower. It’s stood intact since 1592 when construction was completed, so it’s doing pretty well despite the lean.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
On the second day of out short break in Italy we decided to take a trip to Venice, about an hour’s travel by bus and ferry from Lido di Jesolo.
It was our second trip to Venice, the first being over thirty years ago on a day trip from our holiday to Rimini on the Italian Adriatic. On that day we took a full excursion, complete with following a tour guide with a bright umbrella around the sights. We visited various places, including a glass factory, and the place was lovely, but my abiding memories are of being crapped on by a pigeon the moment we stepped off the coach, and of my wife banging her head on a fire extinguisher (I think we were in a stairwell) so hard that she still has a small depression on the top of her head to this day!
On this trip we kept wary eyes out for both pigeons and fire-extinguishers.
The weather was lovely on the day and the ferry from Punta Sabbioni to Venice was busy. I was asked by a fellow passenger – he sounded like he was from one of the Scandinavian countries – if we were not concerned about missing the coronation of King Charles, but I can honestly say that I didn’t miss it at all, and much preferred the cool breeze and the scenery of the Venetian Riviera passing me by to being cooped up at home waching the coronation on TV.
The pictures below were taken on the waterfront after we disembarked from the ferry. There’s something very appealing about the colours in these photos I think. There was also a certain pleasure to be had making them with my Olympus Trip 35 – serving the purpose for which it was designed.
The majority of the photos I took on the trip to Italy were shot during the Venice trip, so more to come!
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 6 May 2023.
Another of the four sheets of film I shot with the Chamonix at the weekend. It’s a location that I’ve featured on the blog a number of times, and seemed a reasonable place to fire off a sheet while testing out the camera.
I’d love to get closer to the old building, but it sits in the middle of crops and the footpath just skirts the edge of the field. I could risk it, I suppose, but I’d not feel comfortable trying to explain that in any way that wouldn’t look self-serving in the event I got found out. I’m h ppy the footpath is there though.
Chamonix 045N-1. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+9 15 mins 45 secs@ 20°
Taken 3 June 2023.
As soon as I pulled this picture’s negative from the developing tank, I knew there was a vignette. It was pretty obvious to see. I’ve cropped in a little and also used some Lightroom wizardy (well, half-assed messing about with sliders) to remove the worst of it, but it’s still plainly apparent in the top corners of the image.
The reason for the vignette is that I used quite a lot of front rise when composing the shot to get the church framed in the centre of the image vertically. My vantage point was from the bottom of the churchyard, which is down a slope, so the front rise allowed me to prevent converging verticals.
Lenses used in 4×5 photogrphy need to have an image circle of 153mm in order to cover the whole sheet of film. As soon as you start to use camera movements, this image circle needs to be larger to accomodate them. My 135mm lens has an image circle of 206mm, which is more than sufficient to cover the film and use a range of movements, but only within certain limits. So, once I use more than around 35mm of front rise (when the front standard where the lens is mounted is raised), the edges of the image circle begin to impinge on the film, leaving an unexposed vignette.
This vignette can be seen on the ground glass, or by other methods, when composing the shot. That is, if you’re paying proper attention. Which I wasn’t.
Another lesson learnt, but the picture isn’t too badly affected, luckily.
Chamonix 045N-1. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+9 15 mins 45 secs@ 20°
Taken 3 June 2023.
