Greece - 2024

With 3 daughters, 7 chickens, 1 dog, and a very busy family, it's always hard to find time to go out and take photos. It is even harder to find time to post about those photos. With that said, I'm not going to write much here, but just share some of my favorite photos from this past Summer trip to Greece. I hope that you enjoy a glimpse into our time in my family's beautiful homeland 🇬🇷🏖️

Most of my favorite photos from the trip are actually of my kids, but I'm trying not to post as many pictures of them on social media these days. Here's some of our first stop of the trip: Thessaloniki; the second largest city in Greece.

I couldn't help but to think back to 2009, and photos that I had taken at night with my trusty D800. Back then, it was a necessity to shoot with a tripod for the night photos by the harbor. Fast-forward ~15 years, and camera technology has gotten pretty crazy. The Nikon Zf allowed me to hand-hold all of these pictures, with relatively high ISOs above 3200, and slow shutter speeds under 1/60th of a second. All the results were pin sharp with low noise. Impressive.

We spent only a few nights in Thessaloniki before making our way west to the mountains:

Next stop - Northern Greece / Kozani, at my mother's village of Agia Sotira. By far my favorite place to visit; not just in Greece, but probably anywhere.

We spent a few days in the village to say hi with my grandmother and Aunt, drop off some extra luggage, and to introduce my twins to the village for the first time. We then drove west to the Ionian Sea to make our first island visit of the trip: Lefkada.

We did a lot of driving on this trip. 2500km in total, and clocking in at ~48 hours in the car. Pretty crazy, considering that we were "only" there for 3 weeks. But we had a great time driving all around these islands and the mainland.

From Lefkada, we loaded the car on a ferry at the Southern Port, and made our way to Kefalonia; an island of note for its beautiful terrain, beaches, caves, and rich history.

Kefalonia certainly did not disappoint with its lush forests topping the tall mountains, and breathtaking views of the beaches and blue seas from the cliff tops. There was no shortage of scenes to photograph.

Monasteries, Caves, Forests, Beaches; if you're not towing 3 children along on your trip, the island is a photographer's paradise.

After a few days in Kefalonia, we bid our time in the Ionian goodbye, and loaded onto a ferry back to the mainland, where we made our way to the city of Ioannina for a night.

Ioannina hosts a large, beautiful lake, Pamvotis, which surrounds the burial site of famous historical figure, Ali Pascha. The city is absolutely worth a visit if you're in the Northern mainland of Greece.

As we kept making our way Northeast back to my mother's village, we stopped at the mountain town of Metsovo, famous for its stone homes and slate roofs built to withstand the harsh winters of that area.

The town acts as a sort of a living museum of Greece architecture of these mountainous village towns. Metsovo almost seems like a town stopped in time, with the only modern distinguishing characteristics being the new smart devices that the visiting tourists are carrying around.

And finally, we arrived back at my Mother's village of Agia Sotira to celebrate at the "Panegyri", or the yearly festival held in the 1st week of August.

We spent almost another week in the village and surrounding towns, visiting with family, and taking in the sites.

The ability for the Nikon Zf to focus on moving targets, like dancers' faces in dimly lit conditions, is kind of amazing. My hit rate on most of these pictures was incredibly high. If there was something that seemed interesting to me, I haphazardly aimed the camera at it and hit the shutter release. The majority of the time, the camera did the work on focusing on the right thing, provided I had it in the correct focus priority mode. It really removed a lot of the planning for pictures that you typically needed to do with older cameras.

The colors were rich and shadow noise low, both in harshly lit conditions, and in the dim moments of dusk. Not having to plan to carry around tripods, or filters, or tons of different lenses for different scenarios allowed me to just enjoy walking around with a small setup. In fact, all of the pictures on this trip were shot with the f/2.o, 40mm kit lens that came with the camera.

It was a wonderful trip - there's so much to share and not nearly enough time to talk about each photo in detail. I'm embarrassed to admit, I still haven't developed the film photos that I took, though I'll be sure to share some of those here as well. Having said that, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our trip!

Here's the last one - a view of my mother's village from across a valley at the next hill top. I love that it gives you the perspective of really how barren the surrounding area is, and how remarkable it is that these villagers were able to carve out a home in the mountainside, and to thrive for generations.