Reflections of Venice with the Ricoh GR IIIx
This is the second post in a three-part series on shooting Venice with the Ricoh GR IIIx. The first, Venice with the Ricoh GR IIIx, covers the more classic, single-frame images of the city. This post focuses on the reflections silently hidden around every corner. The third, Double Exposures of Venice with the Ricoh GR IIIx, turns to in-camera double exposures.
On the way to San Marco, I noticed a shop window with the reflection of the people walking by and the building in front. The carnival masks inside the shop add a somewhat eerie tone that contrasts well with the bright colors of the outside world.
Interestingly, the long-beaked mask is called the Medico della Peste (plague doctor), and it's modelled on the masks plague doctors once wore, stuffed with herbs against the "bad air."
On a narrower calle (the Venetian word for a street), the window of a restaurant reflected the brightly lit people walking past in the opposite direction. The sunlit buildings and street signs in the background also help anchor the image in Venice. And there are layers of people too: the two figures walking in the lower right corner of the frame and the models in the fashion posters behind them.
Next is possibly my favourite image of the day. It captures two gondolas moving in opposite directions on a narrow canal, with the reflections of the colorful buildings in the water. All the elements in the frame run in the same direction, and this makes the image very appealing in my view. It's also quite minimal, without too many distracting elements.
Unfortunately, I wasn't careful enough with the settings here. The minimum shutter speed of 1/40, which usually works well for static subjects with the Ricoh, wasn't fast enough to freeze the moving gondolas, so the one on the right came out slightly blurry. Lesson learned for the future.
Close to the Rialto Bridge, one of only four bridges crossing the Canal Grande, the shop windows again offered some interesting reflections. This image almost looks more like a double exposure than a single shot. The bright elements inside the shop overlap with the darker side of the canal, leaving the brighter part of the frame nice and clean.
I do feel a strong attraction to reflections, as if seeing the world through a separate layer. So I try to get a shot of them whenever I can.
This concludes the second post in the three-part series on shooting Venice with the Ricoh GR IIIx. If you liked these images, you might want to check out the first part, Venice with the Ricoh GR IIIx and the third, Double Exposures of Venice with the Ricoh GR IIIx.
