Here’s a great travel photography tip.
This is one of my favorite shots from our trip to Venice. Venice. Let me roll that one around on my tongue and in my mind. Venice. The City of Magic. Does anybody else call it that? I don’t know. But they think it. Mesmerizingly beautiful, romantic and endlessly mysterious. Venice. I could spend the rest of my life photographing it. So if anybody knows somebody . . .
So, I’m standing there in front of a canal, the bow and stern of two gondolas nearly kissing each other with en elderly, and quite picturesque, Venician gentleman ambling along with the gorgeous Chiesa di San Moise church in the background. Holy shit! I love this shot. But of course, two idiot photographers were right in the middle of it. They were photographing a gondola traffic jam in the canal Rio de San Moise. Crap! The old man is walking and those idiots . . . OK, let me stop a minute. They were just doing what I was doing taking. Only not as well of course. Often enough, I get to be the idiot. But not this time! They were the idiots and I was about to miss my shot.
What do you do? Yell at them our course. “Hey, Hey!” You just yell to get their attention. Since you don’t know what language they speak, while you’re yelling, motion with your hands a kind of brushing movement to one side. But just pick one direction or they’ll keep moving back and forth inside your frame. That’s what makes them idiots. But hey, these two were photographers and knew what I was after and were willing to oblige. And that’s how I got a memorable little slice of life in Venice.
When timing, cropping or angle of attack don’t work for your perfect composition, try yelling at strangers.
It works.