I'll admit: I'm fascinated by gondoliers. Especially when they wear boating hats with a ribbon tied around them that matches the stripes on their shirts. Of all the pictures I took in Italy, gondoliers are probably the subject of an embarrassingly high percentage of them.
They weren't easy to get good shots of though. The water traffic is so heavy that timing is essential: hesitate half a second and the lazy whimsical shot you were trying to get will get ruined by a water taxi, or perhaps even a water ambulance. After many, many attempts, I finally achieved this shot: two gondolas, traveling in opposite directions in the Grand Canal, crossing under the Rialto bridge. I love the symmetry and the shadows in this picture, and hey, the gondoliers aren't too shabby either!
This shot is also proof positive that I married well: without seeing the entirety of the images of the memory cards I took to Italy this may not be apparent, but if you were to see the whole collection you'd realize that Cory has infinite patience with letting me stand in once place for what must seem like an interminably long time, all the while shooting enough photos to convince him that he must have married Japanese.
This photo is from our honeymoon. If you'd like large resolution, enlargement-quality copies of any of the files you see from our adventures in Italy, please leave a comment and let me know.