The Fish Markets - Venice, Italy

The Fish Markets - Venice, Italy 

The Veince fish and fresh food markets were established in 1097 and have provided Venetians and tourists with their daily supplies of seafood, fruit and veggies since then. The markets, which are on the Grand Canal close to the Rialto bridge, open at dawn when the barges arrive and most of the stalls close by midday. As with most things in Venice, the markets provide photographers with yet another opportunity to spend a couple of hours capturing the goings on.

A vendor at the Fish Markets - Venice, Italy

The variety of fish and seafood on sale was amazing. Apart from a huge selection of fish, vendors were selling octopus, shrimp, crab, prawns and a number of other species of shell fish. We got to the markets at around 7.00 AM and found them already buzzing with activity as the locals did their daily shopping before heading off to work. The markets attract a number of tourists and quite a few companies offer tours and teach visitors how to compare the different varieties of fish that are available.

A vendor setting up a stall at the Fish Markets - Venice, Italy

The markets are closed on Mondays and the locals often advise people not to eat fish on Mondays as it is unlikely to be fresh. To give you some idea of the amount of seafood moving through the markets consider the fact that the local population of Venice is around the 60,000 mark and 20,000,000 visitors pour in to Venice each year. The majority of the seafood consumed by these people is sourced at these markets.

Scallops at the Fish Market - Venice, Italy

We wandered around the markets for about two hours, observing the goings on and photographing the activity. We used a combination of the Canon 7D and the 24-105mm lens and the Canon 400D and the 50mm lens to photograph the markets.

Produce at the markets - Venice, Italy

Zucchini Flowers - Venice, Italy

3/52 - Grand Marnier

A Bottle of Grand Marnier 

This shot of a bottle of Grand Marnier (Orange and Cognac liqueur) has probably been the most challenging shot, from a lighting point of view, that I've captured to date. I got the idea for this image after seeing a photograph of a bottle of Hennessy taken by Atton Conrad. Since I had only 2 lights to work with, I had to capture 5 separate images and merge them during post processing.

For those of you who are interested in the lighting, read on.
Unfortunately I didn't capture any of the setup shots as there were too many! Instead I'll describe the lighting I've used for each of the shots and upload the individual images.

Shot 1 - Contents of the bottle and the label

Shot 1 - Contents of the bottle and the label

The Grand Marnier bottle is dark brown in colour. In order to light the contents of the bottle, I placed a Canon 430 EX II directly behind it and fired it towards the camera at 1/2 power. To light the label, I used a snooted Canon 430 EX II fired from camera left at 1/16th. The snooted strobe was gelled with a 1/2 CTO. In order to control the light I played around with the aperture and finally settled on f18.0. I could have got the same effect by controlling the output of the flashes but it was easier to change the aperture instead.

Shot 2 - Defining the left edge of the bottle

Shot 2 - Defining the left edge of the bottle

The effect of this shot is subtle in the final image. To light just the edge of the bottle I fired a Canon 430 EX II zoomed to 105 mm through two sheets of white foam core board. The space between the foam core boards narrowed down to about a 1cm gap. This controlled the spill and only defined the edge of the bottle. the strobe was not gelled for this shot.

Shot 3 - Defining the right edge of the bottle

Shot 3 - Defining the right edge of the bottle

The setup for this shot was identical to the shot above but on the right hand side of the camera.

Shot 4 - Background

Shot 4 - Background

I wanted to light the background of the image a little to give it some depth. I placed a candle just behind the bottle and had the shutter opened for 5 seconds at f4.0 to capture the image above. The light from the candle was soft and warm and I felt it suited this shot.

Shot 5 - Light Painting

Shot 5 - Light Painting

This shot was the hardest to capture. I used a clear glass lined with an Orange and Red gel, filled with clear marbles and a tea light as the light source. The glass was also wrapped with dark tape to allow only a section of it to be exposed to the camera. I had the shutter opened for 3.2 seconds at f4.0. During the exposure I moved the glass around until I captured a light trail I was happy with. This took a while as it was not easy to create a decent light trail.

The image above is a composite of these 5 images.

Venice

A pickup point for Gondolas in Venice 

In this post, I thought I would concentrate on some of the things that we first noticed while wandering around the floating city - not so much the things that one thinks of as quintessentially Venetian, such as gondolas and Carnevale masks, which I will look at in more detail in later posts.

The image above is of the main Gondola "pickup point" at St Marks square. A 5.30am start was required to photograph the area around St Marks square without tourists walking into the frame. This area is unbelievably busy during "normal" hours of the day. The church in the background is San Giorgio Maggiore on the island of San Giorgio.

Read on for more info and images.

A Vaporetto navigates the Grand Canal

Venice consists of two main islands, which are divided by the Grand Canal, and a number of smaller islands. The Grand Canal, as the name suggests, is the main waterway used to get around. It starts in the Venetian lagoon and ends in St Marks Basin. The areas along the two banks of the Grand Canal are very touristy and full of restaurants and souvenir shops.

A Gondola glides along the Grand Canal

There are 4 bridges which span the Grand Canal. Of these the Rialto is the best known and the oldest - in fact, until the middle of the 19th century, this was the only bridge to span the Grand Canal. The Rialto is named after the market on eastern bank of the canal. It was initially a pontoon bridge built in 1181 by Nicolo Barettieri. Due to increased traffic the bridge was replaced by wooden bridge in 1255.  The wooden bridge burnt once and collapsed on two separate occasions, the last of which was in 1524. The stone bridge which stands today was built in 1591. It is constantly packed with tourists, either taking pictures, looking out over the Grand Canal or browsing around the two rows of shops which span the length of the bridge.

The Rialto Bridge

The Ponte dell' Academia is a relatively new wooden bridge across the Grand Canal. It is also the closest crossing to St Marks square. The entrance to the Gallerie dell' Academia is at the foot of this bridge on the eastern bank. The bridge offers two of the best views of Venice.

The Grand Canal photographed form the Academia Bridge

The islands of Venice are home to around 80 churches. Walking into most of these is like walking into small museums, as a number of them contain paintings and sculptures of the great Venetian artists including Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian.

Santa Maria della Salute photographed from a Vaporetto

All these images were captured using a Canon 7D and a Canon 24-105mm Lens. I also had a circular polariser on the lens.