Travel Photography | Pisa, Italy.

I have decided to carry on with the travel theme on this photo blog and to make it a regular fixture. I have decided to explore my journey to Pisa in Italy and also show photographs from my trip there. As you may have read in my post about my journey to Oslo I have a rule when it comes to travel and that it to take one camera only. This may sound obvious, but, there are times when I cannot decide which camera would suit best to where I am going [even if I’m just going to London].

For this journey I chose my 120 Rolleiflex TLR camera. I took this camera to have the serial number checked and was told that the camera was made in 1935. This makes the Rolleiflex TLR 75 years old at the time of writing this post. This also makes it the oldest functional camera that I have. As it works perfectly and can even be connected to modern day flash systems, making it suitable for studio photography. TLR is short for Twin Lens Reflex, this means that the camera has two lenses instead of just one. Which is what you would find on an SLR, which is short for Single Lens Reflex. On the TLR though, one lens is dedicated to focusing and the other for taking the shot. And this particular TLR camera takes 120 film. 120 film is larger than the standard 35mm [which is used in the majority of film cameras] and it also allows for square photographs. A format which I prefer if I’m to be honest.

As the Rolleiflex is so old, it does not have an internal exposure metre. The exposure metre basically tells the camera how much light to put onto the film for a good exposure. So without this I had to guess my exposure and use my best judgement to decide what aperture and shutter speed I should use and judging from the results below I did an ok job.

My journey to Pisa was my first trip to a foreign country by myself. IT came about out of a desire to see the Leaning Tower and always being afraid that if I waited too long it may not be there one day. I obviously knew that the structural problems that had been plaguing it had been corrected but you can never really account for those unforeseen factors. And the reason I went alone was because nobody else shared my enthusiasm for seeing the Leaning Tower so I decided to go it alone.

So with the same sort of hastiness as the trip to Oslo, I booked it and was gone pretty much the next day. But this time as I was going alone I thought it a good idea to book accommodation and I stayed in a nice hotel that was listed as being roughly half an hour walk from the Tower and also if memory serves me correctly I flew with Easyjet for this flight.

Oh, and a little sidenote. At the airport I got pulled to one side after my bag got x-rayed and asked questions about my camera. I take it as they hardly ever see a 75 year old camera on the machine. And it got checked for bomb making materials. It was quite strange as I had never been pulled to the side before and as this was my first trip abroad on my own I didn’t want anything to go wrong.

My flight was quite a late one so the first day of my two day trip basically consisted of me finding my hotel and figuring out my route for the next day thanks to the map that the nice lady behind hotel check in gave me. I woke up early the next morning checked out and went for the walk that I had planned out for myself. That would take me from the hotel through some side streets across a bridge and to the Leaning Tower.

The results of that walk are below. I have included 14 photographs in this post. Some are colour but as you will see the majority are in black and white. The last photograph shown on this post is the view from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I deliberated whether or not I wanted to pay to go to the top, but I then realised that I would regret it more if I didn’t. You also may notice that the colour photograph came out all red. This is due to a light leak which must have happened whilst the film was in my bag because all other films that I have used with this camera before and after, have all come out fine. The lady who is in one of the photographs was very helpful in giving me directions as I seemed to wander of course a few times during my walk.

I have to say though; my favourite photograph out of the whole bunch surprisingly is the first photograph. This is of the lamp in my hotel room. I like the way I didn’t roll the film far enough and it has overlapped with another photograph. I tend to be a fan of the fruitful mistakes that can occur in photography.

I hope you enjoy the photographs. Feel free to comment and look around the blog as I have got quite a few post covering different facets of photography. Also if you would like to know any information about the photographs in a particular post, say for instance, the camera used, the location, the film that I used and so on. Please check the tags at the bottom of the posts and that will have the relevant information. If there is anything else you would like to know about my photography or questions in general. Feel free to use the details given on the ‘Contact’ tab. This is situated at the top of the page.