Sometimes favorite photographs become that way over a long time. It's almost like they earn their place in your pantheon of pictures....

I was tooling around Rome after doing a side project for IBM.  What's a side project?  Well, I was originally booked in to do a project in Monte Carlo.  I did that job for the better part of a week and then, on the last day of the project one of the public relations people asked me if I could make room for Rome.  Of course I can make room for Rome.  I cancelled my train tix on the TGV to Paris and booked a quick, direct flight on Air Littoral.

When I work in Rome I head straight for the Hotel Victoria, just across the main road from the Borgeze Gardens at the top of the via Veneto.  It's an old hotel but it's very reliable.  Belinda found it first on a trip eight or nine years earlier.  Paul B. and I stayed there during a long project in 1995.  They put me in a room up on the fifth floor with a view of the park.

I spent three days tracking down and photographing IBM employees at their EMEA HQ just outside the eternal city and then tacked on a few personal days for walking around in the streets with my camera.  If memory serves correctly I was bouncing back and forth between a Nikon F5 with an 85mm 1.4 and a Mamiya 6 with a 75mm.  This image is definitely from the Mamiya stack.

The image above is a scan or copy shot from a print.  It's random and yet I've come to love it for the rich gestures and the wonderful juxtaposition of the train and the women.  I also love the liberal use of polka dots.

I got this photography because I didn't have an agenda.  I was walking around Termini station because that's where people come and go and the comings and goings are always rich ground for photographers.