When in Rome...

Yes, I am in Rome. I got up at 3am, took the boat to the airport, and was here by 8:30am. Napped until noon, and then explored the ancient ruins of the forum and the Colosseum for a while. So far it seems very interesting. I do enjoy ancient ruins. Work tomorrow, and I really hope things go smoothly. I also need to do some laundry very badly, so hopefully I can find somewhere around here to do that. Sorry for the short post, but I just don't have the energy for anything more. Pictures will be put up if I can get some time later.

John

Day 3

Today was the day they were supposed to be ready to go, so I headed over early after breakfast. They were in the same basic state of chaos as the day before.

So, I did some of the areas that were available, and decided to work on the memorabilia for the rest of the time. It proved to be difficult and frustrating. Much of it was very close to walls, which means I can't get a light stand and umbrella in between the wall and the memo. That leaves me with few options. I can try to use something to reflect light onto the subject, or bounce light off the ceiling or another wall onto the subject. But, because the memo is encased in a large plastic/glass case, any light source that flashes in front of it will be reflected off its surface. Needless to say, it took me all day to achieve results I wasn't even that satisfied with.

I did a night exterior, which should be halfway decent, but not perfect, because the area is extremely high traffic. After I had done this, there was still a small amount of light in the sky, and I decided to see if I could get anything interesting. I hit San Marco piazza, and then ran to the Rialto Bridge.

It was worth the effort. This is what being a photographer is ALL about people. Its not having the most expensive camera or the fanciest lenses, its about being in the right place at the right time, and knowing how to take advantage of it.
the composition on the above photo is awful, but I didn't have time to fix it. Plus I just liked the lights and the colors. I may re-do this tonight.

I will post more pictures as I can edit them, but the bulk of the photos won't be touched until I get home. I simply have far too many to even try to edit.





I am leaving extremely early (3:30am) tomorrow for the airport, so final thoughts on Venice:

Even though it is one of the most touristy places I have ever been to, everything is unique and interesting. In my opinion, there is almost no way you can miss out on the excitement and ambiance that is Venice (unless you go to Burger King or something). Every restaurant is run by Italians (well most of them), and every restaurant is actually in Venice, making it inherently interesting. The draw for me is the experience. Not necessarily seeing as many churches as possible in 24 hrs, or eating at the worlds best small out of the way pizza shop. I enjoyed seeing how life was lived in Venice. The city is entirely pedestrian or boat. All supplies and goods are brought into the city by small boats, and carted around by men with hand trucks and carts. The city runs on physical labor, much the way it probably did a thousand years ago. The lack of any kind of cars is also very refreshing. At night it gets very quiet, and the piazzas echo with your footsteps. It is almost reverent, especially in a courtyard with a church. People walk in small groups and speak in hushed tones as they make their way through narrow passageways lit by small lamps in restaurant windows. As I mentioned to someone, it feels almost "fake" somehow, yet it isn't, and that is why it is so unique. You can't find this kind of place anywhere else in the world. I have enjoyed wandering this city for the past few days.

I make my way to Rome tomorrow.

John

I added a few pictures to the post below. A few more can be seen at my pbase site.

I am working slowly on getting some more pictures up, but I can't justify sitting in my hotel room on the computer when I am in Venice!

The city of lights

On Wednesday I started out the day with the free breakfast at my hotel. According to wikitravel, my hotel is one of the nicer/pricier in the city. I'm sure it was picked for its proximity to the HRC, but it is pretty nice so far. The rooms are very small, but the rest of the hotel is nice. The breakfast had lots of food to choose from.

I went over to meet more of the HRC staff. When I got there, it was crazy. Men were working all over the place, people were working on their laptops, etc. To make a long story short, not only were they in the middle of trying to get things ready for their opening in a few weeks, they had no idea that I was coming, or that there was even a photoshoot scheduled. Translation: somebody somewhere screwed up big time, and it wasn't me.

So, I told them to try to have things ready on Thursday, and I would be back then.

I then headed back to my room and changed clothes, grabbed my camera, and headed out. I visited the Piazza San Marco, which is the plaza of Saint Mark. It is one of the more famous/popular places in venice, and there were a lot of people milling around. The weather was fantastic. High 50s, lots of sun. I didn't wear a coat. I wandered around and took an elevator to the top of the Campanile di San Marco, or the belltower (interestingly it was re-built in 1912 after collapsing. The original was around 1,000 years old). The views from up here were incredible. The pictures should tell some of the story.

I then proceeded to wander through the streets for a while, slowly making my way towards the Rialto bridge, probably the most famous bridge in Venice. The streets range from very narrow to almost impossible to squeeze through. I literally found an alley where I worried about my shoulders fitting through it, I kid you not. Its a good thing I went through head first, because if I had tried to go through sideways, there is no way I would have fit through.

Venice is full of shops of all kinds: clothing stores, very high fashion stores, candy shops, bakeries, coffee shops, pizza everywhere, lots of murano glass shops, and everything in between. The gondolas are everywhere, and their gondoliers (sp?) are constantly trying you to go on a ride. Who goes on a gondola by themself??

The most interesting things to me are the canals, the way the city winds around and has so many small passageways, of course the architecture, and the history of the island. It is extremely photogenic, I took over 500 pictures.

The nice thing about Italy is that I no longer need an excuse to eat pizza. Its Italian food! So I got some for lunch. It was pretty good. I have a theory about food in foreign countries, but I don't think the world is ready to hear it just yet. I also got some "gellato" which is supposed to be special, but from what I can tell is just regular ice cream. It was good though.

So I wandered for most of the day, took over 500 pictures, walked over 20,000 steps.

At dusk I went to one of the 3 main bridges over the grand canal to photograph one of the more famous views of venice. There were a few other photographers there and we talked about nerdy things. I am pleased with the results.



I then ate dinner along the grand canal. I had spaghetti. It seems to me that the atmosphere in Venice is what you are really there to experience more than anything. The atmosphere around the grand canal is very unique in my opinion.

That concludes my first full day in venice. I will post pictures as I can get to them. I will try to get thursday's blog up at some point too. It was much less exciting however.

john

Cologne Day 3

Please click on the photos if you want to view them.

I should have updated the blog last night, but I was too busy catching up with the rest of the world. Oh well.

Yesterday we photographed various items of memorabilia at the hard rock. Guitars, clothing, etc. It is a lot of work, and a huge pain. I have all kinds of flashes and tripods and gear, and its all fragile. And of course, I have to use tables and chairs and ladders to get to high places, so needless to say, its not fun and it gets old. But, everything went very well from my perspective, so I felt pretty good about everything.

I didn't do anything extremely exciting yesterday. I walked around the cathedral some more, but the lift to the top was closed, so I couldn't go up there. I went back to the hard rock for a night shot, which I think should turn out alright despite some rain that threatened to interfere with me.

here is a photo I took on my way back to the hotel:


I stopped at a very german looking restaurant and had a delicious meal of curly kale with potatoes, a sausage with mustard, and some apple pie.

here is what the inside of the restaurant looked like:

This morning I slept in due to staying up late last night, and the fact that my flight left in the afternoon. I ended up sleeping till 10, and since it was raining, did not do any more sightseeing. by the time I had some food and packed it was time to leave for the airport.

I spent most of the time in the airport reading a book. My flight on TUIfly to Venice was nice and short, and flying over the Italian alps was very cool to see.

Once in Venice, I took a water taxi to the island. It took almost an hr because it was so slow and we made a few extra stops on our way around the island.

After checking into my hotel I found some food and met the people at the hrc, which is only a few hundred feet from my hotel. I am looking forward to exploring this extremely unique city.

Pictures will be taken tomorrow i hope.

John

Day 2 of Cologne

EDIT: I added a bunch of new pictures, but for some reason its cutting them off, so click on the picture to see the full image.

I Spent the morning working at the HRC. The people there are great, just like Bucharest, for which I am very thankful. With 2 good shoots so far, I don't know how much longer this will last, but I hope the rest are half this helpful.

Spent a lot of time talking with one of the girls I was working with about life in europe, politics, america, germany, history, culture, etc. It was encouraging to hear more positive things about the US and Americans, as well as the state of the minds in Europe. Sometimes I think that America is the only sane nation left, but its good to hear that many of the people I have met are just as rational as we are, and want most of the same things we do. And the differences in our cultures are what makes the world an interesting place.

On my way back to the hotel I stopped at a small restaurant called Pfaffen Brauerei to get some lunch and get out of the rain. I had a meal that included sausage, and some kind of potatoes with fried onions I think..either way it was delicious.

I decided to take a guided tour bus around the city for 10 euro. It lasted about 1.5 hrs and was a good way to see a lot of the city and get some history at the same time. I took a lot of pictures, some of which I will post if I can, but most of which I will try to put online somewhere else. Cologne is a very interesting city with a unique history and place in Germany. The old city, which is where I am staying and visiting, is my favorite part of the city. I am having a blast walking all over and exploring.

here is the Cologne Cathedral
another church near my hotel
inside of the cathedral
candles in the church
a famous square near the HRC
more of the inside of the cathedral
more of the inside of the church
looking up at the front of the cathedral
a famous building designed by architect Renzo Piano
the outside of my hotel
the inside of the hotel

I went to another bridge over the Rhein to get some more photos from another perspective of the Cologne Cathedral and some other churches along the western side of the river. Here is one that I shot tonight:
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at another restaurant called Rheinland Koln, and had a meal of blood sausage, mashed potatoes with onions, and homemade apple sauce. Naturally, it was outstanding.

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to get a bad meal here. I am enjoying Germany a lot so far. It has friendly people, beautiful scenery and architecture, tons of history, shopping for the wife, and amazing food. It is a country that I would have no problem visiting again sometime.

I will attempt to post more pictures of my travels around Cologne, but I am finding I have less and less time to edit photos. I will try to put some more up tomorrow.

John

Koln

I wanted to get that out of the way first. That is the kind of image I was hoping to be able to capture at some point, and I am pretty pleased with the result. The cathedral is the Cologne Cathedral, quite famous and easily the most dominant presence on the skyline of Cologne. There's a secret to getting this scene to look the way I wanted it to ;-) I won't divulge that, but the fun part is that this picture is totally unedited, except to merge two images into one to make it wider.

Today started off with me waking up at 3am and not being able to go back to sleep. My taxi came at 5am and we got to the airport quickly. It was a different airport this time, Banaesa Airport. An older, smaller airport, it was surprisingly very close to the larger international airport. Checking in was total madness. The terminal was tiny, old, and full of people. It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. When I finally did check in, I found out that this airline (Blue Air) had a limit of 1 checked bag per person, weight not to exceed 20kg. Well I had 2 bags, whose combined weight was about 38kg. So, I paid the fee of 6 euro per extra kg, plus a fee for an extra bag, amounting to about $150. Amazing.

Boarding was accomplished by bussing everyone about 100 yards to the plane, where we piled on. We had some incredible turbulence on the short flight to Sibiu, where we stopped to get more passengers (I guess?). I slept most of the way to Cologne.

Got into Cologne, got my luggage, took a taxi to my hotel, and took about a 2 hr nap because I was so tired.

Woke up, grabbed my camera, and headed out to check out the location of the HRC and maybe meet some of the staff. On the way I would check out what Cologne looked like. I spent some time in the Cathedral. It was very cool. Huge. I took a lot of pictures.

I wandered through the streets until I found the HRC. There are tons of restaurants, shops, small narrow cobblestoned streets, etc. I find it all fascinating.

I ate a very late lunch at a small restaurant along the river (The Rhein). I had marinated porksteak. It was pretty good.

Eventually I went back to my hotel and got my tripod and headed across the bridge to attempt the shot I posted above. I had to wait quite a while in the cold, but I think it was worth it.

That's pretty much it for today. If you don't see as many pictures as you think you should, check back because I add more sometimes. I also updated photos and captions to my last post about Bucharest.

- John