Reflections on Venice
One of the highlights of my recent visit to Italy was a trip to Venice, a place described by Truman Capote as "like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go". Well, I ate two boxes and still had room for more.
I sensed that the city was recovering from a Carnival hangover (the annual event had finished four days earlier) because the place was quieter than I've ever seen it before. The usual hordes of tourists were nowhere to be seen - says me, a tourist :-)
I find the colourful reflections thrown up by the Venetian waterways to be captivating and so, with apologies for the clichéd images, I thought I'd share a selection of the riflessi, rotated through 180 degrees. I've also added a few others from the following day's trip to Comacchio.
The last shot in the grid of 16 isn't of course a reflection - it's of the floor to ceiling curtains in one of the main rooms of the Palazzo Franchetti, a stunning place that housed a retrospective of the wonderful Franco Fontana. To my shame I hadn't seen his work before but was blown away by the glorious swathes of colour and bold compositions. Here is a man who's been producing the ultimate ministract pictures since the year before I was born! Coincidentally, Gianni Galassi was kind enough to make a Fontana reference in a comment on my last post, Comacchio in Colour. Unbeknownst to Gianni, I took those shots the day after seeing the Fontana exhibition - how's that for immediate, subconscious influence?!
All the Venice shots were taken with the Olympus OM-D EM-5 whilst those from Comacchio were taken with Rita Vita Finzi's Canon 7d. Incidentally, Rita has relaunched her website with a blog of her pictures from Comacchio. Please take a look if you have a moment - you will not be disappointed!