Sometimes the simplest of thematic ideas present themselves. We may enjoy many warm and sunny days throughout the year in Rome, Italy, but when it does rain here, it really pours; rarely does it merely drizzle. (Fun fact: annual rainfall in the eternal city actually exceeds that of London.) When the heavens opened recently on a mild autumn day, the city was instantly transformed: wet streets, gleaming San Pietrini cobblestones, umbrellas everywhere, and a sudden quickening of pace by Romans and tourists caught out by the storm. The Ricoh GR II doesn’t love wet weather, but armed with an umbrella and a lens hood, I managed just fine. Here are some of my favourite shots from that day.
I'm Deborah Swain, a British-born creative professional and photographer based in Rome, Italy.
I'm passionate about street, social documentary, and urban landscape photography. Most of my photographs are candid street scenes - Unstaged Tableaux Vivants - but I also occasionally take street portraits.
I would like my street photograph to feel like an immersive experience, as if you are on the street with me and have just happened upon the scene. I am a walker not a stalker, so the photographs are dictated primarily by the situations I happen upon as I move rather than waiting in a specific spot for the action to come to me. I am not looking for the sensational. I believe that an intrinsic dramatic or compositional tension can often be found in images of everyday life.
I began my creative life as a painter, but my photography now is closer to the snapshot photographic aesthetic rather than pictorialism.