367-50 Week 49

Returned from a fantastic trip to Venice on Saturday to find that my internet had given up the ghost so I was unable to post any update for last week. Thanks to O2 customer services, I had a new wireless router delivered toady an I'm back up and running. Here's some holiday snaps to bore the knickers off you all.

15/10/12

So, a whole day of travelling via car to Dublin, plane to Treviso Airport, bus to Treviso town and then train to the town of Mogliano Venito outside Venice. Arrived just in time for a storm featuring thunder, lightening and very heavy rain which put the brakes on getting into Venice. I did get this shot on the hotel room balcony. It was wetter outside than it looks.

16/10/12

Armed with a paper map (the iphone Venice Guide app was truly crap and useless) it was off around Venice. Thankfully the storm seemed to have cleared the air and the skies were blue with temperatures around 19 degrees. Walked around the centre of the city, stopping for coffee, wine, food etc. Took a detour to see this rather gorgeous building called the Snailshell - an external staircase with some truly beautiful north african features. Being a wee bit cheeky, I did climb on the fence surrounding it to get a better perspective.

17/10/12

Wednesday was a day for waterbuses and travelling to some of the islands that surround Venice. The first of these was San Michelle, the communal cemetery for the city. Due to space restrictions, catholics can only be buried here for ten years before their bones are disinterred and placed in a ossuary. No such pressure exists in the protestant section, and they can lie as long as they want. Fact. No photography within the cemetery, but I couldn't resist taking a few sneaky shots shooting from the hip with my wide angle. Also got shots of the graves of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev (buried in the uncrowded Russian Orthodox plot) but couldn't find the grave of the poet Ezra Pound.

18/10/12

Day three and it was off on the hoof again by foot and waterbus. Planned out a day of "lesser seen Venice" and stayed well away from the tourist areas. The day involved an enormous circle around the outskirts of the city, taking in the most far-flung parts of Venice. There are cracking shots to be had everywhere, especially when the light was as good as this. Reflections abound - here's a fairly nice one.

19/10/12

Although today was spent travelling home, I couldn't ignore the island of Burano. Home of lace making, the houses are all painted in bright primary colours and are a dream for photographers and painters. The shot above hasn't been processed at all (apart from a wee crop) and gives a real sense of what this island town looks like.

20/10/12

Having no internet meant I had the chance to get to work processing my pics from the trip on Saturday. I ran a few through the HDR processing and this was my favourite. It's a view of St Mark's from the church at St Georgio Maggiore. Had to wait half and hour before I could get a shot with no people. After this, it was trip up the bell tower of the church for the best view over Venice anywhere. Five euro well spent, although you should avoid it if you're not a fan of either heights or enclosed spaces - the lift to the top is tiny. Also avoid being up there on the hour as the bells still ring and they are deafening.

21/10/12

"Daddy Daddy can we walk up Black Mountain?" I gave in. It was wet, cold and the cloud had closed in really badly by the time we started our walk. I foolishly had taken just my lensbaby with me. This was a bad decision. However, I did come up with this shot of Sarah as she played with some of the local horses.

Ah - only three weeks of this project to go after this one. While I'm looking forward to not being under pressure to take and post a picture every day, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Put the camera away for a week? A month? Carry on? Decisions, decisions.