Summer heat

I find that our perception of air temperature is not only subjective, but also relative, i.e. it depends on what we experienced recently. My recent trip to Europe was unusually long and included stays in Italy, Russia, Netherlands, so I had an opportunity to compare summer weather in these countries. Genoa in May seemed very hot. There were a couple of days when people flocked to the beach in the neighbouring Boccadasse, a Chinque Terre-like idyllic town, and the purple-coloured fountain in the middle Genoa looked like an oasis in the hot maze of the narrow streets.

Eighteen degrees (Celsius) in Amsterdam felt cold after hot and humid Voronezh, and it set a stage for the 45-degree heat of Madrid to be almost shocking. The good news about Spanish heat is that the humidity is low, which makes it tolerable. Also, further South, in Nerja, the temperature was much more comfortable 35 degrees, and the breeze from the sea made for exceptionally nice warm evenings – something that I miss in Victoria.

Weather is an important aspect of photographs, but I often forget to consciously convey it in the pictures. Most of our everyday activities are weather-independent, yet weather has a strong emotional resonance – perhaps, a remnant of prehistoric times. As I work through my photos, I will try to use the photos with distinct weather elements to paint a more personal picture of the various locations. This is quite challenging, though, as our sense of temperature is inherently non-visual, so the visual clues of summer heat are often subtle and indirect (sweat on the subject’s forehead, blueish shadow in harsh light, etc.)

Perhaps, it would make an interesting project to try to show different kinds of weather, from nice to nasty to dangerous in a single series of photos.