Exploring the Floating City with a Canon AE-1
Venice in the fall. The city breathes differently when the summer crowds fade. The soft, diffused light reflects on the water, casting subtle ripples on ancient facades. The damp air carries the scent of salt and history. I arrived with no fixed plan—just my Canon AE-1 and a few rolls of Kodak Vision3, ready to capture whatever unfolded in front of me.
THE CAMERA – A CLASSIC COMPANION
The Canon AE-1 is a camera with a certain charm. Released in the late 1970s, it became one of the most popular SLRs of its time, known for its reliability and ease of use. It’s lightweight, compact, and features a bright viewfinder—a simple tool, but one that invites a slower, more deliberate approach to photography. The built-in light meter is accurate, though there’s no autofocus, so every frame requires attention. That’s part of the appeal. The process is as much about the moment as it is about the image.
THE FILM – CINEMATIC COLORS FOR A CINEMATIC CITY
For this trip, I chose Kodak Vision3, a film originally designed for motion pictures. It has a distinctive color palette—soft but rich, with deep shadows and a smooth highlight roll-off. I got the film from Silbersalz35 in Berlin, a company that repackages it into 35mm canisters and offers high-quality scans. Their Apollo scanner produces crisp results, and the option for 14K scans makes every detail shine. Venice, with its muted pastels and textured surfaces, seemed like the perfect match for this film’s characteristics. The final scans did not disappoint. The colors, subtle and restrained, felt just right—far from the oversaturated look often associated with travel photography.
A CITY TO BE WALKED
Venice is best explored without urgency. I wandered through its labyrinthine alleys, over bridges, and alongside canals, moving without a fixed destination.
One of the first scenes I captured was in San Polo—a gondolier guiding a couple through a quiet canal, the water reflecting the pastel facades around them. The red-and-white striped mooring poles stood like silent markers of a timeless city. The moment felt both cinematic and intimate, a small story playing out in the gentle afternoon light.
Over in Dorsoduro, I found myself drawn to the stillness of the water’s edge. A small group of workers was tending to a boat, the early morning light casting long shadows on the wet pavement. These quiet, unobserved moments are what make film photography so rewarding—the ability to preserve a fleeting, almost mundane scene, but one that carries the weight of a place’s rhythm.
San Michele, the cemetery island, was different. A place of silence, where the hum of the city seemed to dissolve. White tombs, rows of cypress trees, the occasional flutter of birds. It was a reminder of Venice’s layered history, of its past still present in stone and memory.
Then, Burano. A place that felt like a world of its own. The houses, painted in vibrant colors, stood in contrast to the muted tones of Venice itself. A faded red facade with ornate white detailing, green shutters half-open, light bouncing off its surface in soft waves. Another house—simple, blue and white, a striped awning framing a small shop entrance. It was easy to get lost here, the colors shaping the mood, the slower pace letting the island’s charm unfold at its own rhythm.
I took one of my favorite shots from the top of San Giorgio Maggiore, looking back at the city in the late afternoon. The domes and rooftops stretched out towards the horizon, a delicate haze softening the edges of buildings, the lagoon reflecting the warm glow of the setting sun. A subtle light leak left a warm orange mark in the lower part of the frame—one of those imperfections that makes film so special.
SLOWING DOWN
Shooting film here felt natural. No rushing, no endless bursts of images. Every shot required a pause, a brief moment to frame, focus, and expose. Some images didn’t turn out—the focus slightly off, an exposure miscalculated—but the ones that worked carried something special. A depth, a tone, a feeling that digital images often struggle to replicate.
Venice, in its quiet moments, is deeply meditative. The city asks you to slow down, to watch how the light changes, how shadows stretch along the canals in the late afternoon, how the reflections dance at dusk. Photography becomes more than just taking pictures—it becomes a way of experiencing a place, of seeing beyond the obvious.
One of my last shots was taken at night, near San Marco, where gondolas rested on the dark water. The lights from the piazza flickered across the lagoon, the bell tower standing tall against the deep blue sky. The grain in the image added to the atmosphere—Venice at night is a place of mystery, of echoes, of stories that seem just out of reach.
By the time I left, my rolls of film were filled with glimpses of this city—soft morning fog, warm afternoon light, silent corridors of water. Venice is not a place to be conquered in a rush. It’s a city that reveals itself slowly, in the quiet in-between moments, in the space between footsteps and shutter clicks.