Some Photos of Venice

It's been a little bit since I did a post about photography, and as I've got at least two more amigurumi posts coming up (just as soon as I finish second drafts of my two brand new designs...) plus an idea for a third crochet-related post, I thought I'd attempt to keep things somewhat mixed, at least. :) Because I haven't been neglecting the photography part of the business, quite the contrary!

First, I've listed five of my prints as 8 x 10s on Etsy!
1. Sunlight on a Stump.
2. Honey Bee on a Sunflower.
3. Columbine.
4. Big Ben and Parliament.
5. The Lotus Leaf.

For the first time in a long while, I've been devoting serious amounts of time to trying to get my photos on Flickr labeled. I've gotten through about a thousand, I'd estimate, of the roughly 12,500 unlabeled pictures I've got uploaded (out of almost 43,000 uploaded items, I've got 75% labeled). I'm also on top of things, in that I've labeled almost everything I've uploaded recently, which is great. At this point, most of what isn't labeled is from 2009, when I traveled a lot and got way behind. What generally happens is that I fall behind when I go on big trips, and then spend a long time catching up. So most of the random pictures I've taken in NYC have been labeled, but hardly any of the pictures from Italy have been, ditto my trip to Paris last February, and ditto my trip to Chicago in December 2009, ditto (to a lesser extent) my trip to Paris, London and Amsterdam in September 2009, and ditto a long roadtrip I took in April 2009. If I got through the pictures I took on these trips, I'd be almost caught up.

Middle of last month, I set a goal: try to get all of my pictures labeled before my Flickr account hits 2 million hits. At 500,000 and 1 million hits, I did commemorative posts on my Live Journal - I hit 500,000 on May 4th, 2009, and 1 million on January 3rd, 2010, if anyone wants to read what I wrote back then... My next milestone is approaching, when I started this labeling kick I was at 1.75 million, and getting about 1500 hits a day. At that rate, I thought I would have time to get the labeling done. I don't know what happened, but for the last few weeks I've been getting closer to 3000 hits a day. As a result, I would have to get all of the currently unlabeled pictures done in a mere 51 days - a rate of 230 pictures labeled a day! Well, I can't do that. So I won't be caught up by then. Which makes me sad. However, the effort I am making is pretty time consuming, and has been eating a lot of my photography time. So, consider this a teaser - in about two months, I'll be very excited to be posting a big long post (along the same lines as the two on LJ) about hitting 2 million, which I think is quite a milestone.

Before then, one of the perks of going through the labeling is I get to see the work I've done. The downside is that I'm going through it so fast that I'm not getting to really appreciate much of it. However, on Friday I finished up labeling all of the sets I'd taken since the trip in September (yay!!) and so now I'm tackling the Italy trip (I'm working backwards, most recent to least recent, in my labeling). That meant that today I went through the first of several sets I took of Venice. I thought I'd share some of the best shots from that first set - and find out if folks think any of these are print sales worthy.

You can check out the whole set here: Piazza San Marco. There are 138 photographs in this set, taken between 9/27 and 10/3 of last year, and it includes a visit after dark, and another I took the last morning we were there, when I woke up stupid early with insomnia so went out to take pictures of the sunrise (our hotel was pretty close to the square).


This picture enables me to introduce the main buildings in all of these shots. This is the Piazza San Marco. The domed building in the left background is the Basilica San Marco. The tower is the Campanile. The building on the left is Procurate Vecchie, and on the right is Procuratie Nuove, which now houses the Correr Museum (a museum about the history of the city), an archaeological museum, a gorgeous library, and more.


This is part of the facade of the Basilica. The inside of the Basilica is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, but photography wasn't allowed inside. Every single surface is covered in golden, shimmering mosaic of biblical figures, scenes, and saints. (this shot I sneaked while outside doesn't begin to do justice to how astonishing it is.)


Walkway of the Palazzo Ducale (not in the above image - this is the building to the right of the Basilica).




Column of Saint Theodore.








This is the Palazzo Ducale. It's really amazing. The two people in this shot were clearly engaged in some sort of photo shoot.


A view of the Piazzetta di San Marco, a smaller plaza off the main one. The Palazzo Ducale is on the right, the Libreria on the left.






The Lion of San Marco.


One of the things about Venice is that the entire city is slowly sinking in to the Mediterranean. As a result, the important buildings need constant maintenance. Which is why the Basilica was half encased in scaffolding during my visit. This is the only shot I took of the Basilica that wasn't pretty much destroyed by that fact. :)



So, I know it's a lot of images, but, well, I took a lot I think turned out well. :) Hope ya'll enjoyed! I'll try to do more image posts in the future, once I'm more caught up on the labeling.