Fear Factor: Florence Edition

My semester in Florence, Italy was spent tackling some of my biggest fears.

To begin with, if you know me you know that I’m a social person. You’d probably never guess that I’m horrified of being in a situation where I don’t know anyone and I have to make friends with strangers. Luckily I avoided this problem freshman year by coming to W&M from Northern Virginia. I already knew about half of the campus. (Kidding!) But seriously, Orientation just wasn’t a problem for me when there were kids from my high school that were coming with me. In order to have a chance to conquer my absurd fear, I decided to pick a study abroad program outside of W&M where I wouldn’t know anyone. I’ll never forget how I felt when I got off the plane and stepped onto Italian soil. Who should I talk to? Was I talking enough? Was I talking too much? Where could I find the nearest phone so I could call my Mom and jump ship?? Eventually I did manage to make some friends, so I finally got over fear # 1.

Fear # 2 is even more idiotic. I am incredibly afraid of doing anything alone. Before I went abroad, eating alone in the Sadler Center was a terrifying concept to me. If it really came down to it and I had to, I would only sit for five seconds and stuff my face with the closest available option – when I was finished I’d sprint out of there while simultaneously making an attempt to cover my face so no one would see that I just had to subject myself to the horror of eating alone. Now, you’re probably thinking – who cares if you eat alone? This is a very valid point and it really doesn’t matter. So, in Florence, I made sure to stop being ridiculous and I sat alone at cafés, just to see what it felt like. Gradually I discovered that no one was staring at me and thinking I was a big loser. I did discover, however, that sitting alone at cafés made me subject to many advances from Italian men. If you’re a girl and have a pulse, this can become a problem. I quickly decided that it would be o.k. to bring backup in the form of my friends.  Safety in numbers.  Even still, at the end of the day I realized that it’s not so bad to sit alone and go on solo adventures.

One of my more recent and tangible fears is my fear of my SLR camera. You may be thinking to yourself, “Blair, why would you ever be afraid of a camera??? It’s just a camera!” Wrong. This camera could easily make the list of the top ten things that scare and intimidate me the most. My parents gave it to me innocently last summer for my birthday, thinking I could use a nice camera to take pictures abroad. When I opened it up from its box, I discovered it was absolutely nothing like my old camera.  With my old camera, I could just point and shoot and ta-dah! The picture would be taken. This new camera was a whole different animal. It had about 50 different buttons and a crazy thing that looked like an elephant’s trunk attached to it. To make matters worse, when I actually took a picture it was incredibly out of focus and you couldn’t decipher a person from a dog. Unfortunately, the manual was about the size of a textbook and I didn’t know where to begin. So, naturally, I stuffed the camera in a drawer and didn’t use it all semester.

When it came time to pick classes for Florence, I saw that one of my options was a digital photography class. I figured I’d bite the bullet, wipe the dust off of my camera and give it a go. At first, the assignments were easy for me to complete. I took abstract photos, photos of city life and landscape photos.  A tree certainly doesn’t mind if you take its photo (or at least I think it doesn’t) so those weren’t too bad. Things started to get a bit tricky when it came time for my assignment on street photos. All of the street photography that I admire captures real expression and emotion, which you can’t necessarily get if you’re hiding behind a zoom lens. This meant that I would actually have to get close to people, or even approach them. I heard the music and felt that it was about time that I go on a solo adventure.

I went straight for the street market and leather vendors. I had no sort of plan, buffer or support system –  I was alone, without friends and without a firm understanding of the Italian language. Ironically enough, this shoot produced one of my favorite photos of the semester:

I walked straight up to people and asked for their picture.  These men in particular were in front of a leather shop. Shops like these were all around the city, and you could get a customized jacket in a day. I asked them for their picture, put on a girlish grin, and snapped the shot before they could pose. The man on the left was upset and insisted that I didn’t get his best angle (all this in Italian), so I had to do a mini photo shoot in the street. Secretly, my favorite of them all was the first picture that I had taken. When my professor evaluated this particular picture, he told me in broken English that he was proud of me for being brave and going for it.  It was easily one of my proudest moments of my time abroad – finally, I had conquered my fears. (Well, at least some of them.)