The Portofino Experience

Prior to November 2004, I had owned a number of cameras including a Rollei and a Nikon F2 which I traded-in for a Canon Elan 7E in 2001. 2004 became important because in November that year I went digital and I got the Canon 20D. I had been waiting for some time now for the Canon to offer a digital camera with an affordable price tag. In the past I have owned good cameras but this Canon 20D was an impressive machine and I was exited to work with this camera. A couple of weeks later after reading the manual and trying out a few shots, I choose the Portofino Hotel grounds in Universal City, an Orlando location, to try the camera.

Why the Portofino Hotel? The Portofino Hotel project caught my interest some years ago, when Universal city was under construction and I had read some articles about the planned Universal City complex. Part of the plan was the construction of a replication of Porto Fino, an Italian Village located of the coast of the Ligurian Gulf in the providence of Genoa, Italy. At that time the project was touted to be unique and an enormous undertaking. I visited this location once a year or so ago and I was impressed with the architecture and colors used.   

It was about mid-winter and mid-afternoon when we got to our destination and parked the car in the hotel garage, got our gear and headed for the lobby. The village was at a lower level and we headed for the elevator to go down. As we exited the elevator, I noticed this pond with a variety of small boats anchored of shore and an array of two to three stories high Italian style row houses everyone of different design and painted in a different pastel color. There were many shops and restaurants located around the pond that as a whole looked like the center point of a small Italian Village complete with outside vendor wagons and restaurants. This place was very colorful and the whole looked like a postcard.

There were other guest taking pictures and I was comfortable with the feeling I was just another guest. I mounted a 28-135mm Canon IS lens on the 20D canon and since I had decided to walk around the complex I set the camera shutter at 1/250 second to minimize camera shake and the ISO at 100 and started shooting. As I walked the entire paved area and the path around the setting, I became amazed with the photogenic qualities of this project. The colors were just perfect and the watercraft realistic. Even the birds (sea gulls) were cooperating! There were stairways, big ones, small ones, and hidden ones. There were back alleys and covered walkways and, the late afternoon light just right! As it got later in the afternoon, the light became more yellow and intensified by the cast of the colorful buildings. The results of this shoot promised to be exiting and high yielding. Returning home, I uploaded the pictures to the computer and I was very pleased with the results of that afternoon. The late afternoon light had done magic to the pictures and the Canon had proved to be an impressive picture “taker.” Several of the shots have won ribbons and, indeed it was one of highest yielding shoots ever!

Herman J Muller