It has been remarkably quiet on the home front — for a good reason. I went to Venice to make some photos and participate in a photo workshop with one of my favorite photographers, Jonathan Chritchley. The workshop perfectly overlapped with the CES 2018 show. And since everyone was busy with the show and very little work was to be done anyway, I am glad I took this opportunity.

It was a fruitful trip, where I found a lot more about myself, my photography and why I like making a certain kind of photo. Any trip which involves making photos also means one comes back with too many photos.

The trip also reaffirmed two things — I need to take fewer (not more photos) and I need to carry one lens (if zoom) or two, if manual primes. I came back and looked at my photos — about 650 photos over seven days — 100 a day. I need to curb it to 50 photos a day or what would be two rolls of film.

More than 40 percent of the photos were in the 45-to-55 mm focal length. About 30 percent with at 24-28 mm focal length and about 20 percent were at 90 mm focal length. Basically, I could either carry smaller (and lighter) 24mm, 50mm and a 90mm prime lens from Leica, and run the risk of getting dust on the sensor during the lens switching, or I could just carry a big 24-90 lens, which makes the whole kit look like a bazooka.

I have culled through about 650 photos and slimmed down the selection to about 125 photos. Further segmentation has reduced the numbers to about 30 and they will be part of my B&W/Fine Art series and will need some editing.

However, I put together few of the remaining picks in a narrative, which goes beyond the usual tourist snapshots. I hope you enjoy them.

January 15, 2018, San Francisco

Feature photo made with Fuji x100, focal length 23mm (about 35mm on a full frame camera) and f 2.8, 1/140th of a second and overexposed by two stops.