A week* in photos: Apr 14 - 20
*it's actually just a day
This week is my Easter break, and it marks the start of my schedule finally freeing up. And I was really looking forward to taking time to shoot more, especially from somewhere other than the back of a scooter (the electric kind, not the cool kind). Instead, I’ve been blessed with rainy & overcast days for most of the week. Lucky me! That & the feeling of being too drained to do anything.
But today was a bit nicer, and I willed myself to Porta Portese. Camera came with me, because it’s impossible to go there & not take at least one picture. I took a few more than that, though.
The theme of the day is “dogs,” apparently. People love bringing their dogs to Porta Portese, and it’s fun getting shots of dogs in the chaos. Today it was much less chaotic there in general, though, for better or worse.
I wanted to talk about community, and I wanted to make it a full-fledged post. But I’d rather sum it up here:
My experiences here, overall, have been much more positive than over on Instagram. The responses and connections from people feel much more genuine than the half-hearted likes on IG, and things feel a bit more grounded here. It’s a nice change of pace, but one that I’m still trying to adapt to. I feel like I could do more to interact with folks here, although I have to admit that it’s often difficult to organize my thoughts & give meaningful responses to people.
This is something that would be much easier to do in person, as speaking is so much easier to do than the editing and re-editing and second-guessing that comes with the written word. Maybe that’s just me. The problem that I have, and one that I think isn’t that uncommon, is that trying to find (or build) these communities in the real world feels very out-of-reach. Where do photographers even meet? The only reliable thing I’ve found has been workshops, but the idea of paywalling human interaction feels… not-great. (Of course that’s not the only reason to attend a workshop, but spending a couple hundred euro on “networking” isn’t my idea of a good time).
So that’s been my recent struggle, and something that I think a lot of other people are struggling with as well. As much as I appreciate and enjoy the small online communities I’m lucky enough to consider myself a part of, replicating that in the real world is proving particularly challenging. The lack of flexibility in my schedule & thee language barrier I’m still working on overcoming certainly don’t help things either. My Italian is definitely better than it was almost 3 years ago, but my Italian photography vocabulary is a bit lacking.
Still, I’d love some ideas on ways to meet other artists outside of online spaces. It’d be great to organize or participate in things like photo walks or group shows, but I need to find said groups first. Wesley Verhoeve wrote a great post last week touching on this, but that mostly shows the endgame. I would love guidance on the first baby steps to take towards these types of communities.
Also here’s a bonus shot of one of our dogs:
His name is Fizzgig & he’s incredibly spoiled.