My Favorite Florence Surprise

In response to Jim Goldstein’s Photography Blog Project: Favorite Photo and Background Story call to action, I originally thought of my experience from earlier this year about minding your surroundings. However, after further thought I figured a story with a happier ending would be more appropriate…

The photo to the right was taken almost a year ago in Florence, Italy. My wife and I were on our official belated honeymoon spending over three weeks traveling through Italy (something I suggest everyone should do at least twice in their lifetime). The key words here are belated and honeymoon. This wasn’t a photography specific trip. My wife would let it be…nor could I afford it to be since it was belated. (I think you get my point…)

This was our second day in Florence. During the climb to the top of the Duomo, we noticed some storm clouds on the horizon. About mid afternoon, a rain storm rolled through. After a brief downpour, the sun broke through again just before sunset. After taking a number of photos of the Ponte Vecchio bathed in sun with black clouds behind it (click through on the photo to see all my Florance photos), we strolled across the Ponte Vecchio. I was the patient husband while my wife window shopped every jewelry store on the bridge (the Ponte Vecchio is known for its gold jewelry shops).

Once she was done looking, hunger pains hit both of us and we went off in search of a restaurant that was recommended to us by a fellow traveler on the train to Florance. We walked a block away from the Ponte Vecchio, turned left down a alley. As we got a half block down the alley, another (smaller) alley cut back toward the river. I glanced over and saw a great shot of the Ponte Vecchio, bathed in the golden light of sunset, framed by the buildings flanking the small alley. In one swift motion I pulled out my camera, composed, shot three frames, pocketed the camera and continued toward dinner without breaking my stride. My wife didn’t even know I took the picture. Later that night, I pulled the camera out to see what I had. To my surprise, it was the exact shot I had seen in my mind’s eye, ideal to be cropped down to a vertical panorama of Ponte Vecchio…the image above.

This image has become one of my favorite shots from Florence! With the assistance of a friend of mine, I was even able to print it on an Epson 9600 at 3.5 feet tall by about 1 foot wide. It’s an amazing print that I’m hoping to showcase on our stairwell wall as soon as I can find a cost effective place to mat and frame it!

I see this image as proof that the universe will align itself for your photographic benefit from time to time…

5 Replies to “My Favorite Florence Surprise”

  1. Thanks for that catch Cindy! I’m always super careful with spellings on my travel photos (for obvious reasons), but I missed this one. I fixed the spelling in the blog post.

    At least I was consistent, had it spelled wrong in the entire post! But, trying to recover some creditability, the spelling was correct on the keywording of images on my website. 🙂

    [Reply]

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