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Venice gondola's posted some days ago

On the second half of the day spent here in Venice I decided to focus on gondolas. I have a lot of time before the sunset alas the the sky is not going to promise a good light at the end of the day. In Venice you can find gondolas everywhere, but I need a place where the light is controllable, to get some extra mood. The search starts walking around in the small alleys that have small canals, avoiding the big ones or the direct facing on the sea because the light will be not good. In the first part of the movie you can see a small basin I found near the Venice centre. It's a really good place because it's full of gondola's and is mostly covered by the shadows of the houses. When sun is strong I always prefer to work in shadows where I have more control but in that sceene I have to handle the light hitting the higher part of the buildings walls.
"What should my exposure be?" and "From where do I take my meter reading?" are two good questions you have to mind in that case. The exposure is a mix of many settings like: aperture, shutter speed, ISO and we have to manage it all to reach our shoot. In that case the exposure is ruled by the aperture that must be at a value that can describe the subject with the ambient and "tell the story" you're shooting on, then a ISO value that must provide a handheld shoot, and finally the shutter speed will be a consequence.
About the metering, when I am in places where the light is not controlle (and I have no devices like flashes or reflective panels), I mostrly use the matrix metering. On nowadays cameras I found that algorithm very accurate and quick and using the exposure compensation dial, every camera has its own in some place, managing the exposure is very timesaving.

On the gondolas' basin sceene you can see how the high part of the houses wall are blown out by the sun, that's the first thing we have to rule so I set a -1 EV and -1/3 EV on most of that shoots. I could set the metering mode in spot and then measure the light to expose correctly but, as I sayd before, when I shooting reportage or street I really don't find that useful. When you're using the matrix metering remember that on most of the cameras the exposure is biased on the active focus point, that means that if I focus on a black gondola then the matrix cpatured light is biased on a black subject and so if I want to keep it in a strong black usually I have to underexpose a bit the shoot. That behaviour surely change from camera to camera.
On first two shoots (0:55 - 1:33) I excluded the higher part of the houses due to the strong sun then waited to used some gondola's shipman figure to fill the image. The gesture of shipmans are really interesting and help to give some action at the shoot of the other gondolas berthed in the basin. On the scecond sceene (1:34 - 2:40) I'm on a small alley with a nice canal ending with a clasical venetian bridge a hotel entrance on the right and two wonderful gondola's heads in font. The canal is almost all in shade and the sun is hitting the bridge on the background, I'd like to use the two gondolas' heads in the front that, exposing for the light on the background, will be two good sihlouette. On first impact I tryed to include also the red poles on the right, then I wondered that closing the frame on the gondolas' heads and the bridge, using a tele lens, will be a better shoot. I focused on the bidge lightened by the sun and knowing my camera metering I set a +1/3 exposure compensation to keep the shadows readible.

The alley bring me facing on Punta della Dogana were take place the cotemporary art museum helded by François Pinault. On the edge of the museum there a statue by Charles Ray "the boy with the frog" and I want to get a shoot of that statue in a different way. First I used two red poles to "frame" the statue, but the security man keeps too close to the statue (2:54) so I started waiting a gondola passing the canal, but at the end I spot a vaporetto, Venice waterbus, and put the statue in it like a human passenger (3:18). That were a good idea, but I realized that my tele lens was a bit too short so I used the last good light to catch some reflections on the ships on the dock near me (3:20).