Somehow I made it all the way to middle-age (ahem) without ever having visited Europe, but now that I have I want to keep going back. I want to see Portugal, Spain, Scotland, Mediterranean islands, especially Sicily, the Alps... but it’s appropriate that I started with Italy. My mom’s side of the family is infused with Italia and it’s always been said that, among her three boys, I’m the one who got all the Mediterranean blood. And so it was that some 110 odd years after my grandfather left his homeland for America, as only an infant, I finally arrived on her shores. He lived his whole life without ever going back so I like to think I took something of him with me, even if only by virtue of the fact I possess “the Poppy gene” as it’s called in my family, sometimes notoriously, and the fact I bear a fairly close resemblance.
We visited the bustling streets of Florence, the small Ligurian city of La Spezia, Cinque Terre, Lerici, Lucca, and the “Queen of the Adriatic,” Venice. We ate and we drank, perused piazzas and cathedrals, plugged ourselves into the neighborhoods where we stayed (becoming honorary residents of the Oltrarno with Piazza Santo Spirito as our epicenter), sped through the countryside on the Frecciarossa, and drove a rental MG through heavy downpours only to emerge from mountain tunnels to magical, mid-rain sunlight illuminating a double rainbow. We took shelter in the Loggia del Porcellino one rainy Florence night with hundreds of strangers, locals and tourists alike, spontaneously singing Frankie Valli “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” argued with the sandwich maker at All’Antico Vinaio, enjoyed Michelin star meals, celebrated a birthday with a bottle of Prosecco during a midnight Venetian power outage, cooked an improv pasta in an Airbnb, and, best of all, got engaged on Ponte Vecchio.
I went over with a girlfriend and came back with a fiancé, but I also brought something else back with me: a fire in my belly to see more. Well, that and some cured meats, cheeses, and olive oil! While exploring Venice very early one morning, before most tourists were even out of bed, I literally teared up at the beauty and grandeur of Piazza San Marco. In that blue early morning light just before sunrise I wondered to myself why had I gone the better part of a lifetime without exploring this country, this continent I’d always wanted to visit? Why had I taken my kids to Nags Head year upon year, as run-of-the-mill and mundane a locale as there ever was, albeit a lovely and serene one, when we could’ve been taking in other cultures, history, antiquity, art, architecture? There’s no easy answer. Hindsight is always 20/20. No matter, though. A revelation is a revelation regardless of when it hits. I’ll be going back to Europe as soon as I’m able, assuming she doesn’t collapse under the weight of political and demographic strife, or the onset of a World War, or some as yet unknown pestilence, real or manufactured, or some combination thereof.
I’ll be back. And, again, I’ll bring my camera.
This is a random selection of images I shot with my little Fuji Xpro3. For my work I usually use a Canon R5 with a battery grip, often on a heavy Gitzo tripod and tethered to a laptop, but that’s too cumbersome for a personal trip. That little Fuji fits in my backpack and I can handhold it at slow shutter speeds with no problem. Good thing, too, because it seems in retrospect I showcased movement in Italy more than anything - bicycles in the city, gondolas in the canals, boots stomping through puddles; I love these prime lenses wide open but in Italy I often felt moved to stop down to f/11 or f/16 and drag the shutter for some motion blur. For work, more often than not, I’m tweaking my environment, moving things into and out of the frame, rearranging subjects for maximum compositional benefit, using lights and modifiers and reflectors to influence shape and depth, but this? This was totally out of my element. Part street photography, part reportage, I had to just point my camera at things and fire, background clutter or chaotic foregrounds be damned. It was exhilarating. Makes me want to start carrying a camera everywhere I go again like back in the day when it was just a hobby!
iPhone selfie :)