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5 posts tagged vivienne gucwa photography
France through the Lens
I spent the afternoon going through photography from my adventures in France this year since I am preparing for a few different presentations right now (information about those events below!). I love reliving moments through photography.
When I look through my photography, I can feel everything about the scene I was photographing: the scents in the air, the way the light fell just so, the anticipation of the moment, and every emotion that was welling up inside.
I have seen and read a lot of articles denouncing the ubiquitousness of cameras in all of today’s moments as if cameras are over-peppering a perfectly balanced and flavorful landscape.
But, I have always felt that the camera has allowed me to live in the moment more. And I relive the moments I capture after the fact, relishing everything I felt in that split second of time.
Travel is all about these moments.
Like how the light bathed the history-worn walls in Aix-en-Provence.
Or how the shadows fell on the stairs in Marseille.
The way Carcassonne sleepily overlooked the countryside.
While cats nuzzled each other next to croissants at Café les Chats, Paris.
Hotel Negresco’s Dali-esque interiors spun me round and round.
And the light in the south of France sprinkled itself over Marseille like fairy dust.
It was during that one dusk in Montpellier I felt my heart swoon.
And it filled with magic at midnight in Marseille during Fete de la Musique,
As I explored every alley I could the next day.
As storm clouds gathered above Paris,
Gustave Moreau’s house whisked me into the past,
while Montpellier’s rich golden walls held my heart in its hands.
And when this scene stopped me in my tracks,
I knew my heart would never beat the same way again.
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Upcoming events and appearances:
1. I will be speaking on a panel at this coming weekend. French Affairs Las Vegas is an annual travel B2B conference hosted by France’s official tourism agency Atout France and focused on travel topics with a focus on France and Paris.
My panel topic is: Social Media and Millennials in the Travel Industry. This is topic near and dear to my heart so I am looking forward to the panel discussion.
2. I will also be presenting all three days of in New York City on the Sony stage about travel photography. My presentation topic is: Traveling with Sony Mirrorless Cameras.
I will discuss the social aspects of sharing with Sony’s mirrorless cameras as well as the reasons why travel photography has gotten a whole lot more delightful for me. PhotoPlus Expo is the largest photography and imaging event in North America.
If you will be at PhotoPlus Expo, please come and say hello and if you have time and feel like gazing at my travel photography while I talk about my experiences photographing France come have a listen to my presentation. I will try my best to be entertaining. Promise. :)
3. I also have news to announce about my like info about signed copies as well as potential book-related events and appearances. I will do an update about all of this soon.
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Looking for these (and more) France photos to view larger? Here you go (click or tap on each photo to view larger):
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Interested in viewing all of my France posts so far? Here they are:
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Incredible amounts of gratitude to:
France’s official tourism agency who you can find here on Facebook . They made my entire France photography adventure possible and went above and beyond in making sure I was well taken care of everywhere I went (truly).
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*All photos taken with my Sony A7R and Sony A6000.
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Paris - Summer in the City of Love
Paris blossoms
in the summer.
Trees,
heavy with leaves,
shimmer in rare bouts
of sunlight
that pours
over the city streets
like white gold.
And even
the rain
shimmers against
history-bleached architecture,
as the days linger long,
like trailing words spilling slowly
off the phrases of lovers.
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A motorbike drives down a street in Montmartre.
Sacré-Cœur Basilica and Montmartre street.
Paris rooftops as seen from the top of Montmartre through a TimHotel window
Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre Metro Station
Sacré-Cœur Basilica as seen from the top of Montmartre through a TimHotel window.
Sunlight pours over a street in Montmartre.
A shared umbrella in a Paris rainstorm.
Sunlight and shadows along the curved streets of Montmartre.
Flower boxes and quiet streets on a Sunday.
Along the Seine.
Walking in the rain.
Rooftops and a distant Eiffel Tower from high above in Montmartre.
Where hearts dream.
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Looking for these (and more) Paris photos to view larger? Here you go (click or tap on each photo to view larger):
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Interested in viewing all of my Paris travel posts so far? Here they are:
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Interested in viewing all of my France posts so far? Here they are:
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*All photos taken with these cameras: Sony A7R, Sony A7, Sony A6000
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Paris: Royal Monceau Hotel - Hallway
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Here is a little teaser from where I had the pleasure of staying as a guest of the hotel itself when I was in Paris recently. The interiors are intricately and whimsically designed by Philippe Starck and I fell in love with them during my stay.
Here I am running down one of the hallways feeling like Alice in Wonderland.
I will be posting a huge photo-set from my time spent there later this week. But, I couldn’t resist posting this timed action self-portrait that I took with my Sony A7R. I set up my tripod in the hallway and used my phone to trigger the timer countdown on my camera. And then I ran and hoped for the best much to the amusement of some of the staff :).
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Nice - South of France - Sunset in the Streets
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I have been slowly going through my photos from South of France which has proven to be a gargantuan task considering the sheer amount of content that I ended up with from each city I visited.
I plan on posting quite a few photo-sets from each city as well as separate in-depth photo posts highlighting some of the unique aspects of each place. And, of course, I will also do the same for Paris since I ended up spending 10 days in Paris after the South of France journey was over.
While I was in France, I posted quite a few photos in-the-moment and I typically did that with my cameras (I brought along my Sony corral which included the: A6000, A7R, and A7) by uploading the photos from the camera directly to my phone where I did super-quick edits of them using iOS photo-apps before posting them to , , and my travel blog.
This photo means a lot to me.
It was taken on the first evening that I was in Nice.
The light was light I dreamed about when I was younger and would bury my head in books about far-off sun-drenched locations.
I didn’t grow up in a family that traveled since my family didn’t have the means to travel. My father worked nights as a pressman for the Daily News, a fact which I was ashamed of when I was in grade school since it seemed like most of my peers had parents who had glamorous white-collar jobs which afforded them the means to travel. It took my parents 10 years to save up enough money to take a 2 week European vacation back in the 1990s without feeling intense guilt about allocating those funds for something other than necessities.
And so, when I travel, I always get a bit emotional along the way (that’s a bit of an understatement). My eyes well-up when I think of how much I yearned to be able to experience travel when I was younger. And while travel is part of my career in photography, it’s still constantly amazing to me that I even get the opportunity to do what I do.
I posted another version of this photo a month ago on the evening when it was taken. I stood there in Vieux Nice with the other journalists who were traveling with me and we all took turns admiring the light and capturing it with our cameras.
I insisted we all do that because I knew this was the light that people dream about.
It’s the kind of light that keeps you going even in your darkest hours when you are trying to claw your way into the life you have always wanted to live.
And it’s the kind of light that just knowing it exists in reality is enough to keep the dreams alive.
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Adventure Through The Lens: A Travel Blog
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There are certain colors that dominate memory mixed on the palette of the mind’s eye with the hues from dreams.
But it’s the tones of nostalgia that stand out the most: lingering longing for places and moments we have or have not experienced that creates a void in our beings so deep that its echo is felt in every moment.
There are words for this type of nostalgia: sensucht and saudade. Sensucht is a German word that describes the emotional state of longing and yearning and saudade is a Galician- Portuguese word that describes a similar intense state of longing for something or someone. They can both be experienced as a longing for a place that is unidentifiable but somehow familiar and indicative of what we would most closely identify as home. Sometimes the yearning is so intense that only the emotional state is what we are aware of and it’s not always easy to tell that there is a deep yearning for something or someone at that moment.
As the early morning light casts its glow over the reds of the bricks in the city I call home, I feel a constant longing for other cities I have not yet experienced.
In the light that falls onto the street early in the evening I see the same light casting its glow on the spaces I wish to walk thousands of miles away.
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Welcome to my new travel blog.
For a really long time, my biography included this paragraph:
“I hope one day to have the means to be able to explore the rest of this vast world and to capture as much of it as I can with my photography in the same way that I have devoted myself to capturing the essence of New York City with my images.”
What better time than now to pursue my biggest dream? I have a few trips coming up related to workshops and conferences and a ton of ideas about where I would like to go to attempt to satiate my longing to travel.
This weekend I will be heading to the in Pennsylvania with Carol from . I can’t think of a better time to launch this venture!
I intend to explore the world in the same way I have approached .
I hope you enjoy accompanying me on my journey.
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*This was taken in Tribeca, New York City. I love old, faded signs and red brick facades and this scene made an indelible imprint on my heart.
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