Exercise 1d: Street puppeters in Piazza Navona, Roma

I was not really happy with the exercises so far, I thought some extra practice would not harm. (and I am enjoying the exercises!)!

Back to Roma, I needed a different frame of mind to think of interesting subjects, available on a gray Sunday. The first idea was to approach some woodcarvers, they would have definitely had made some visually interesting shots. They would have worked slowly and without too much unrelated clutter around them. Shame that they were all closed.

So I cycled around the centre, looking for inspiration, and I ended up in Piazza Navona. The usual crown, caricature sellers, street theatre, vendors... Definitely there should be something to portrait there.

My criteria were to look for something that could complement the exercises so far, i.e. people which:

1. Were not too fast (some street performers jump, run move fast and do all sort of different things... no good for exercises: I would not have the time to try a shot over and over),
   
2. were not too static (on the other extreme many people act as statues... but they are really like stone statues, not much action there),
   
3. were interesting but not too crowded (some shows attract too many people, forming large circles which make difficult to move around close up... and on top of this any shot will always have a wall of people somewhere).
   

At the end I found a puppeteer, manoeuvring a live Pinocchio, in a quite corner of the square. Nice. On the pics side, still a lot to do, converting in B&W was again a BAD surprise, light and exposure really never work... but I had fun.

The bonus of the exercise was a slightly surreal conversation with one of the paining sellers of the square, one of these people who have been living in the square all his life. He decided that I was a talented aspiring paparazza and invited me for coffee. He started telling stories of "dolce vita" which he witnessed in the square... his encounters with the famous people transiting in piazza Navona (ranging from Hollywood stars to key politicians in Italy)... his contact and friendship with everyone who counts in the photo world... if I want to become a paparazza, apparently, I have a key contact now! :-)

The Pinocchio people were a nice group. One of the puppeteers was a musician, the Pinocchio and the second puppeteer were professional actors which would usually play in "commedia dell'arte" theatre. Taking more than a distract look at these small shows paid off. I feel that these exercises and all this chatting might even make me a more friendly and outgoing person. And I can feel potential for many discoveries not only in my globetrotting but also in the very place where I am supposed to be based.