Venice

A while ago I went to Venice for a weekend. I'd never been before and was astounded by the architeture and quiet, peaceful nature of the place. It really was a great place to lose yourself and rejuvenate. I took my camera with me and went looking for some shots that weren't so touristy. Some of the side streets offered scenes like the archway above. It was great because there just seemed to be photo opportunities everywhere. I realised when I got back that some of these pictures just looked better in black and white. Some looked better with the colour muted to give a cool evening feeling. And for anyone wondering, neither of the two gondola shots or the pidgeon man shot were posed. I was just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. But I am especially happy with the archway shot. I love it everytime I look at it.

Sometimes you will go somewhere and just see the perfect natural framing already there, staring you in the face. It is great when that happens. If you find that you don't have a lot of time to take an assortment of pictures, just have your camera set at a wide frame. Keep it as steady as you can. I find going down on one knee suits me best and take the shot. Follow this by taking more at various distances, but make sure that first one is wider. The reason for this is that when you feed the image into photoshop (if it is the only one you managed to capture) you can crop in to suit. It is extremely difficult to add extra to a picture. It can be done depending on the frame, but will involve hours of cloning and may not give you the results you require unless you're shit hot with photoshop. So stay wide and crop in later. As you get better, you'll find you get a natural feel for framing eventually.

My filmmaking is useful that way, as I learned very early on how to frame to get exactly what I wanted. At the start I had to edit in camera as I went and everything had to be right. I guess those rules still stay with me and I apply them to my photography also.