Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
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.
As a child, VW Beetles were a commonplace sight, whether parked on the street or seen driving along roads, their passage announce by distinctive air-cooled engine sound. Sometimes I would be overjoyed to see one that had been painted to look like Herbie.
But over time they faded from view and it wasn’t until the new, much worse looking (in my opinion), New Beetle arrived in the late 1990s that the cars began to be widely seen again, on British roads at least. The New Beetle lasted from 1997 to 2011, when it was replaced by the sleeker-looking Beetle A5, which itself was finally retired in 2019.
The original Beetle design is a classic and as a result there are still many being maintained, so it’s easy to find one (or several) at classic car shows, and they also turn up in customised form. There’s a customised green Beetle often to be found parked near my local fish & chip shop which I’ve thought about photographing but, apart from a digital snap I took a few years ago, I haven’t gotten around to doing so.
When I spotted this pristine Beetle in Lido di Jesolo, I just had to get a few pictures. It’s nice to see one in such pristine condition in the wild.
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 May 2023.
A very noticeable feature of the beach at Lido di Jesolo was the sheere quantity of sunloungers and beach umbrellas. There were thousands of them, probably tens of thousands! It’s someting I’ve noticed in other Italian resorts too (in my relatively limited experience of them), but they really stood out here.
Hotels have their own section of beach with sunloungers for their guests, although I think they can be hired by non-residents too. Some of the hotels are directly adjacent to the sand, but others might be a street or two further inland.
We visited in early May, before the main Italian holiday season begins, so most of the loungers were unoccupied while we were there. I expect it is a sight to behold at the height of the season!
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 May 2023.
This interesting building sits atop the EuroSpar supermarket in Lido di Jesolo. It was pointed out to me that it was designed by Stefano Pujatti of ELASTICOFarm. This doesn’t mean much to me being somewhat unfamiliar with the world of modern architecture, but I was happy to see more pictures of the structure and find out more about it via this link: https://www.elasticofarm.com/architecture/le-batiment-descendant-lescalier/
I had no idea that the swimming pool was there on the occasions we visited the supermarket!
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 May 2023.
Or should that be gellato?
Should you be in the mood for a frozen treat, you can glimpse more giant ice creams here, here, here, here, here and here. 🙂
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 May 2023.
A whole bunch of pictures to come over the next week or two from my recent trip to Lido di Jesolo in Italy with my wife. It was only a short, three-day break, but I managed to get through two-and-a-half rolls of film with my Olympus Trip 35.
As it’s late and I (shock! Horror!) almost forgot to write a blog post today, I’ll keep this one quite short.
This small building was set just back from the beach and, like so many other hotels and houses, was painted a vivid shade. It has “1937” written on the wall in Roman numerals. I guess it’s possible that the building dates back to then, but I suspect it may have some different significance. Whatever the case, I felt it made for a nice colourful subject, and I like the leading lines formed by the strips of matting in the foreground..
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 May 2023.
Steel City Snapper photography 