Naples + How I had my first story published

Naples - Carla Coulson

Naples Copyright Carla Coulson Italian Joy

Naples Copyright Carla Coulson Italian Joy

Naples Copyright Carla Coulson

Naples Copyright Carla Coulson Italian Joy

 Naples Copyright Carla Coulson

Florence Copyright Carla Coulson Italian Joy

Goodmorning from Italy!! This week I will be in Italy and blogging from one of my favourite countries in the world. Tap Dance!!

Italy has been good to me. It gave me another chance at life, at a career, delivered me profound love for her people, ways and food and introduced me to 'his gorgeousness'. Italy changed the way I lived my life, the way I ate, the way I looked at things, my career and it taught me to go slow.

Italy also helped me get my first story published. Could I ask anymore of her??

Here is what happened..

I was at photography school in Florence when my teacher announced that we all needed to do an end of year project that we could present to a magazine or use to build a portfolio. He had already delivered the news that no magazine would ever give us a job based on our portfolios without precious 'tear sheets' (published pages of our work from magazines). Welcome to the real world!

I chose to do a story on my favourite city Naples. Before I started I researched as much as I could about local customs, food, traditions, religion, personalities, important landmarks, festivals and famous Neapolitans. We studied how a photo story is put together, what shots are used for double pages openers, what shots were used for the main body of the story and what were the closing shots. Studying numerous magazines I realised every magazine has a 'recipe' of how they put a story together. Look closely and you will see.

I treated it like a job. Everytime I went I stayed for a three or four days and worked from sun-up to sundown getting all the 'must have shots' that would define Naples as well as the shots that made my heart sing (see above).

Each time I returned to Florence my teacher would act as photo editor and man he was brutal! He would literally get my 'trannies' and chuck them in the bin if he thought they were rubbish. Could there be a tougher way to edit? He was honest when things weren't good enough, too blurry or badly composed off into the bin they went. He also applauded the ones full of emotion and with what he considered the right amount of blur.

This process took a couple of weeks, me going back to Naples and him chucking my photos in the bin till we had a tight selection of 150 great images. No mean feat.

I called all the Australian magazines I dreamt of working with months before returning home. They all gave me a chance to meet them.

Vogue E + T (god love their souls) told me my photos were beautiful but they had just published a story on Naples, Qantas asked me to leave the photos in the mail room and Marie Claire cancelled my appointment. My feet were dragging by day three. On the 5th day I received a phone call from the creative director of Marie Claire telling me they wanted to publish my photos. I almost burst into tears on the phone!! There was one problem they needed a personal story about Naples to go with it and they had six weeks before the publishing deadline. I rang a journo mate of mine and she gave me the name of the writers studio and off I went for a month long writing course. Six weeks later I forwarded my story on Naples (they edited it to the eyeballs to make me look good) and voila I had my first story published.

On Friday as I packed my bags I dug into the depths of my 'camera cupboard' and pulled out my old Leica M6. It felt so tiny in my hands after the Leica M8 and the Canon 5D.. I gathered some rolls of black and white film out of the fridge and decided to go back to the beginning. To take the photos I always loved taking with just a roll of film in my pocket, my Leica M6 in my hands and the dream of a great photo in my heart..

Keep shooting

Carla x

All of the above images were taken on my Leica M6

On Tri-x 400 black and white film

Some great reading on Naples Falling Palace  and for Art Lovers Street Fight in Naples and of course if you love Italy you might like my book Italian Joy

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