After spending the majority of Friday night taking useless pictures of random household objects within eyesight of my bed (shoes, tissues, pens, curtains, chargers... you name it) I was feeling somewhat despondent about my apparent lack of skill with my beautiful new Canon slr camera. I debated spending the whole of the next day researching how to use it properly, reading blogs, watching tutorials, learning how every single feature and button worked, but then I opened my curtain, looked through my porthole and it was a beautiful, blue sky, sunny day. I jumped out of my bed, into the shower, off the boat, and onto the train to Monaco (with dodgey deckhand in tow, he insisted on coming, knowing FULL well that I was going solely for the purpose of learning to use my camera and to take pictures, of EVERYTHING)
Our train was delayed which meant a 50 minute stop in Ventimiglia. I decided to go for a quick walk around, to see if there was anything I could take PHOTOS of and WOWZER I came across the most enormous, most lively and colourful market selling everything fresh and beautiful; flowers, fruit, vegetables, cheeses, seafood, pastries... EVERYTHING. There was so much colour and life I was in seventh heaven. Franco was NOT, and absolutely DID not understand why I was taking pictures of carrots and old ladies making pasta, to which I told him "Franco, yours is not to question why, but to DO, or die, my friend. Now stand still while I take a picture of your eye"... he was VERY confused.
By the way, before I continue, there are QUITE a lot of tricky things to learn about photography: iso, aperture, depth of field, f-stops, white balance etc. and whilst it's a good idea to have a general understanding of what they are before you head out, I learnt yesterday that it's best to just get out there and start taking photos and play around with all of them until you understand and can see for yourself what they all mean and how they effect your photo. Top Tip!
I told you about my photo guru friend who's helping me, right? Well, he gave me all this "homework" to do and set some RULES. Rule number one: do NOT, dooooo not shoot in anything but manual, do not even think about sliding that little switch to auto. Rule number 2: use only the 50mm lens. So that's what I did; mine is not to question WHY (god I really need to get that out of my head). But still. It was frustrating, at times, because I couldn't zoom in (with the 50mm lens), I had to do a lot of walking and moving around to get the shots I wanted and trying to get things like the iso and the shutter speed right was a little confusing. Franco thought I was mad and didn't understand why I didn't just whack my big 18-135mm lens on and put it in auto and get some "good" photos and why I was letting myself be bossed around by someone who was in another country (I'm not quite sure about that one either).
We walked through the beautiful gardens dotted around Monaco, along the edge of the coast and saw the palace, we watched the changing of the guards, I took pictures of doves and lamp posts and ice creams splattered on pavements, Franco got pissed off, we had lunch over-looking the port and I consumed way too many calories. We went to the fun fair along the water's edge, we spent 40 euros on ridiculous rides and games, I came worryingly close to winning the world's most enormous pink flamingo teddy bear thing, I ate some (of Franco's) candy floss (yeah I know) and spent the better half of two hours taking pictures of sweet little children on the carousel, bright coloured balloons, enormous lolly-pops, clowns, huge teddy bears, colourful lights and anyone or anything that caught my eye. If it wasn't for old tag-along and his huffing and puffing and "can we GO now" I would have stayed there forever. I took hundreds of photos and really, only a few decent ones, but I learnt so much and had SO much fun. I could seriously get into this photography thing, what better way to spend a day? This is why I woke up at 4am to plan my next little date with my camera...
