A populated Europe

I look through a whole lot of pictures of Europe as part of my job. And, according to those pictures, Europe is basically uninhabited. I'm not sure why it is exactly that tourists and even experienced, serious photographers so rarely take photos of people in Europe, while they do so on every other continent. Perhaps it's because they're sidetracked by all the pretty buildings. Or maybe Europeans don't look "exotic" enough to photograph. Or perhaps many photographers feel less comfortable taking pictures of subjects who look similar to themselves.

Whatever the reason, one of my main photographic goals of this trip is to record the fact that people do in fact live in Europe--quite a few people, in fact.

The pictures that follow are not very good in an absolute sense, but they do represent a small victory for me. In many cases, I've been brave enough to obviously point and shoot at people (and they don't seem to mind). In many others, I've asked and received permission. It's getting less scary. Now I just have to get up the courage to actually shoot people for a few minutes once I get permission rather than taking a shot or two and thanking them. Also, my new 50mm lens only manually focuses on my camera, so it's double the pressure!

But here's a beginning (and, as you can tell, I've been playing around in PhotoShop). I hope to get at least one really good one in the two months that we're here.