Jorge Quinteros

Pulling into Venice

I couldn’t be the hit and run type of traveler even if I wanted to. The type of traveling most celebrities are put through when they’re promoting a release. The type of travel where the only detail they have to validate they’ve been to a country is the faded stamp on their passport or the endless photographs published thereafter on tabloids highlighting who they were seen with.

The mere thought of traveling to unfamiliar territory instills this curiosity towards certain aspects of a place that most people would deem inconsequential based on their own level of interest. Do I need to know what the local beer is? Do I need to know what specific things characterizes a place or how people live or what they generally think about or what they care about and maybe even uncover things that are typically kept secret by locals? Perhaps you could respond “no” to all those random questions but for me, walking away knowing the answers to at least a few of them makes me feel like I may know a place more than someone who may just care to brag about where they’ve been based on the numbers of refrigerator magnets they’ve collected.

It’s easy to get a superficial handle of a place but it’s something totally different when you’ve chosen to become part of a community and have been granted access and given a better understanding of wherever you’ve chosen to visit. I can’t say I’ve had the privilege of exploring all those questions I’ve mentioned with regard to the cities we’ve been to but just thinking about it sure as heck embarks you on this mental journey of realizing what it make take to truly say that you know a place. I may not know that much about Venice but as long as there remains a level of curiosity towards the place is all that matters.

Venetian Canals

It may seem rather bold to say but when visiting Venice, don’t anticipate taking any photograph that other countless tourist haven’t thought of already. For uncommon photographic opportunities, local ambience and quite frankly even affordable meals, I recommend you wander through the back alleys of neighborhoods that you might have no idea where they’ll ultimately take you but just realize that the ratio of people who have chosen to do something similar is far less and so anything that stems from this excursion is likely to result with a unique experience of the place. It’s what Vanessa and I did during the whole 2 days that we walked aimlessly around the city.

Also, during our honeymoon, as we traveled from one European city to another, I quickly picked up this habit of browsing gift shops for the sake of scrutinizing their collection of postcards and get an idea for the type of shots I wanted to veer from taking. Consider this act as your time for doing research. There’s nothing worse than finding out after the fact that you’ve missed the opportunity to photograph something amazing because you didn’t know what to look for.

A prevalent element of the city that I rarely saw in postcards were photographs highlighting the narrowness of the canals and the intensity of the sun light that seemed to beam everyday. A lot of people talk about all the unnecessary materialist things that would buy if they won the lottery one day and yet actual things would be the last thought on my mind because I rather invest on experiences such as visiting Venice once again.

From Inside the Louvre

Rummaging through some photographs from when my wife and I vacationed in Paris 3 years ago has convinced me more that viewing art was not just limited to the narrow confines of the museum walls we were in. To visit Paris in itself is more than an opportunity to admire art even if pieces like the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory or the ever-so-stylish Mona Lisa is not your thing.

By the time we got home, we needed a vacation from our vacation because the amount of sightseeing through endless walking we experience was exhausting yet rewarding at the same time. According to guide books and from first hand experience, it’s nearly impossible to see every piece of art inside the Louvre in one day and we certainly didn’t try to but it was one of those recognizable landmarks in the world that you cannot go without seeing for less than 3hrs.

Exiting the Pantheon

The perception I once had about travel in general has been redefined. There’s those who do it to cross off countries from their list and there’s those that indulge in it to learn, understand and discover. Within a day of being in Rome, we learned there was more to this city than delicious food and abundance of motorcycles.

As much as we appreciate lounging under the sun waiting for another cocktail to arrive, I much prefer waking up at 6am to explore a city and seek its attraction with a camera. We arrived back a the hotel all sultry and sweaty, too exhausted for anything else but it’s irrelevant because the excitement of those photographs downloaded contained expressions of an experience that wouldn’t have been possible had we not made most of the day. The challenge with a city like Rome is that most of sought-after landmarks like The Pantheon or The Vatican are not close to each other.

Assuming you have enough time, they key to enjoying your stay is to have an idea of the places you want to visit and yet leaving the schedule behind and enjoy the little in between nuances that would make you aware of where you are. Very little happens are great pace and even less happens at time. As croweded as it may have seemed, The Pantheon is more quite than the Vatican, although not near as large and grand but opulent in itself. The architecture is magnificent, the open roof and the drainage system to accommodate rainfall is worthy of modern day engineering.

Having spent nearly 45mins inside this Roman temple and this was the view as we exited onto the square where you would find the Bernini fountain in the center, surrounded by local coffee shops and restaurants.

In the US, there’s a lot of hype about the fantasy of visiting Europe and it’s mostly driven by what we see in films. I don’t recommend it if you’re don’t have an iota of interest for food, culture, long days of walking to visit museums or historic churches. If your aim is to be as enthusiastic about a place like Rome, you might want to check to see if what I mentioned interest you in your own city first.

Weekend Chess Play

There’s times I go days without photographing anything and the uneasiness of not strapping on the camera puts in perspective what smokers must feel like when they go hours without a puff. There’s an addiction to the act where you fail to feel like yourself when you’re not doing it and what I generally resort to during these dry times is to sift back through Lightroom catalogs for photos that I purposely failed to upload.

I say purposely because I think it’s a good practice to do away with the natural inclination of uploading every photograph you think is worthy of being shared so that when you don’t have the time to photograph, you at least have a reservoir of content to publish.

Having reviewed photos of when we vacationed in Paris back in 2007, I noticed the photos of landscapes, buildings and transportation could have been much more technically proficient but what nagged me the most from them was the shortage of people pictures I had. At the time, I was oblivious to who Anthony Bourdain was so I didn’t have the influence of realizing the significance of capturing slices of life from locals. Neither did I have the courage to openly ask stranger for portraits the way I may do now.

With the exception of this photograph of 2 friends playing chess on a Sunday morning in Jardin de Luxembourg, I feel I have nothing to show for being in Paris. I’m exaggerating of course but my visit would have been more fulfilling had I been able to have exchanges with locals that were intensely powerful. Reasons to travel generally boil down to the combination of wanting to see things and the need to experience them but the travel aspect has a bigger affect on you when you’ve connected with at least one person.

I loved every moment we spent discovering Paris riding the Metro thinking how much easier and cleaner it was in comparison to New York. I wish to revisit again and apply the technical stuff I’ve learned about photography up until now and capture what I consider the most important feature of a place which is its people.

The Duomo in Florence, Italy

If photographs really do capture your soul, certainly no one left Florence with theirs still intact.

Our official introduction to anything truly Italian was through our arrival at this beautiful historic city. It was our first port of call on a 7 day tour onboard a 12-day Mediterranean cruise. As I’ve mentioned in the past, one of the conveniences of cruises is the ability to see a lot more places in a short amount of time but along with that comes the inability to fully explore a location as much as you would love.

Aside from the inflated tour prices onboard the cruise, we generally don’t book any excursions but in this case, we had no choice. The last thing you would want is to get lost somewhere unfamiliar but the experience you get by exploring everything on your own as oppose to being on a tight schedule is dissimilar.

Because our memories are unique, most of us want our photographs to demonstrate that. We don’t want to sift through our albums, tangible or digital, and feel it’s the exact same as our neighbor’s who happen to be there by chance and not because they had genuine interest in what they saw.

Perhaps having a much more wide-angle lens would have gratified me more with this photograph but I wasn’t too acquainted with Borrowlenses.com at the moment and I had just purchased the Nikon D90 and you don’t realized how much differently you would have taken a photograph until you’re miles away from where it was captured.