Although my most recent visit to Venice was, officially, under the auspices of Olympus UK’s OM-D workshop, I could hardly not take my XPan with me. So, before, and indeed during, the workshop, I sneakily grabbed a few frames using not only a non-Olympus camera, but even a non-digital camera!!  The sky did not fall, however.

I think this is my favourite shot of from the couple of rolls I shot. It’s taken way, way away from the mainstream tourist traffic.

This, along with a few other panoramic masterpieces can be enjoyed in my recent work gallery. Go on, what else have you got to do for the next five minutes ?

Following yesterday’s seismic events around Apple Aperture - which may or may not have a more positive interpretation, for example here, I decided to reacquaint myself with CaptureOne 7 Pro, and with its integration with MediaPro. No real conclusions yet, although CaptureOne is worth considering as an alternative to Aperture, but I was really impressed by two things: first, CaptureOne’s keystone tool and its black & white conversions. And second, and not for the first time, Apple’s RAW decoding really is very, very good. If CaptureOne is state of the art, well so is Apple. And CaptureOne’s much vaunted noise reduction, frankly, is about on the same level as Aperture’s, at the RAW decode level.

But enough of that, for now. I did end up producing some black & white versions of a few shots taken last week in St Tropez, France, in CaptureOne, that I’m quite pleased with. And that pulled me out of the OCD-levels of “testing” I’d got myself stuck into.

Un

Quatre

Cinq

Neuf

As I mentioned a few posts back, I decided to sign up to an Olympus sponsored workshop in Venice led by landscape photographer Steve Gosling and Travel and Portrait photographer Neil Buchan-Grant.

Well, that’s now in the past, and it was a great experience. Neil and Steve are great photographers, excellent and attentive teachers, and wonderful people. They worked extremely hard to make sure all participants got plenty out of it. From my point of view I found being forced strongly encouraged to photograph the standard scenes of San Marco and Rialto thronged by tourists and in very harsh light, rather than skulk way off the beaten track to my usual dingy haunts frustrating at first but very rewarding at the end. I also found the very new experience of photographing models quite captivating.  Again, being encouraged to do this in the mid-day hothouse of Piazza San Marco, literally engulfed by excited tourists, really pushed the envelope. Neil set up the lighting, directed the models, leaving us to just grab the opportunities. I don’t think I’m going to branch out into yet another direction photographically, but it was a far more engaging and enjoyably creative experience than I expected.

From the cityscape / landscape side, Steve helped me a lot to put some order into my jumbled approach, and to point me in the direction of themes I had started on but not really recognised. I have to admit that at one low point, between being kept awake, dead tired, at 1am, with an alarm call pending at 4am, I'd decided to hit the pause button on photography after the workshop, but the next day completely revived me, even if some of my co-participants made a lot more of the 5am session at Rialto than I did.

Just for fun, here is a small selection of model portraits I shot. In at least two of these cases I was wilfully ignoring the directions / advice Neil was giving. I hope he’ll forgive me!

Olympus Pen E-P3, Panasonic Leica 25mm f1.4

Olympus Pen E-P3, m.Zuiko 45mm f1.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, m.Zuiko 25mm f1.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, Sigma DN 60mm f2.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, Sigma DN 60mm f2.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, Sigma DN 60mm f2.8

Thanks as well to our two very patient and professional models, Ira (first three) and Chiara.

The Olympus E-P5 was kindly leant to me by Neil Buchan-Grant. It’s a very nice camera, and the output is distinctly better than my E-P3. Quite shockingly so, in fact. There is far more dynamic range and the highlight rolloff is much smoother. However, it probably wasn’t such a good idea to use an unfamiliar camera in such an unfamiliar context.

About 3km from where I live in Switzerland is the town of Ponte Tresa, named after the bridge over the river Tresa, which drains Lake Lugano into Lake Maggiore, and marks the border with Italy. Ponte Tresa is actually two separate towns sharing the same name, with a Swiss side and an Italian side.

The bridge over the Tresa. Italy starts at the signpost.  Note the contrast between the spotless, perfectly maintained railing on the Swiss part and the rather more, er “relaxed” look on the Italian side…

Both sides, it is not unfair to say, are rather run-down. Old photographs show a much more prosperous past. Lifting of most border controls, and the shifting patterns of commerce have drastically lessened their status as frontier towns, with just a few fly-blown import agencies as reminders of past glories. But even so, the two sides are remarkably different. The Swiss town keeps up appearances, but seems lifeless. Even the banks are closing. But of course it is clinically clean, quiet and tidy, and the surrounding holiday homes and lavish apartments on the hillsides above and by the lake lend a solid air of Swiss prosperity. The Italian town, on the other hand, is scruffy, chaotic, noisy and vibrant. Even the dingiest bar serves great coffee at crazy low prices, the shops are open in the evening (gasp) and even on Sundays (even bigger gasp) - although the smaller ones take a healthy afternoon siesta. On Saturdays it’s great to just wander over the bridge for a jolt of culture shock and soak up the atmosphere. At weekends in the warmer months there are floods of German, Dutch and Swiss-German tourists, all eager to go bargaining in the wonderfully, ahem, authentic Italian market, where they’re sure to be fleeced by traders from authentic Italian locations such as Pristina, Poznan or Bucharest… or maybe on the odd occasion Palermo. But it’s all good fun.

Ponte Tresa feels like monochrome photography. So here are a few scenes from around town.  These are all taken with the Sigma 60mm DN lens, and converted in Nik SilverEFX.

Of course I don’t want to knock my adopted country, and there are some quite obvious economic reasons why commerce is dead on one side of the border and thriving on the other (and then again, why there are beggars on the street on one side and not on the other) - but even so, the difference in atmosphere is quite remarkable, given that both sides, in theory at least, share a common Lombardy culture and the same language.

Well, I may be a way off 60 yet (mind you…), but the effects are clearly setting in early: when I wrote my review of the Sigma 60mm lens a few days ago, I completely forgot that I’d taken another set of shots specifically to illustrate it.  Oh well, it gives me an excuse for another gratuitous post.

So here are some more photos taken using the rather excellent Sigma 60mm DN f/2.8 “Art” lens.

The following two photos are processed using a blend of colour and black & white layers, following Gianni Galassi’s mentioning of this technique on his blog.  I’m sure he does it better than me, but anyway I quite like the effect.