Greece | a photographer in the making goes from noob to professional in under 6 hours
Some thoughts on Greece and learning a new craft
Oh, Greece. It took so long to meet you.
Greece is one of the main tourist destinations in Europe. Sometimes, I wonder why I hadn’t been there yet.
Perhaps because the biggest appeal is to go to the Greek islands, which I still haven’t been to, and I often spend time at the beach in Brazil. Perhaps because it is one of those destinations, such as Italy, that you can always go to, no matter how young or old you are.
For a while, one of my fun facts was “I’ve been to Uganda but I’ve never been to Italy.” You could replace Italy with Greece and the impact would be the same. Now I need a new fun fact.
A delayed but worthy visit
Despite the delay in visiting Greece, or possibly because of it, I had an amazing time there. Greece is full of history. Their people have been there for millennia, and they are proud of it.
Greek history is, in my opinion, a bit confusing if you don’t know it very well—which I don’t think I do. In school, we learn about the Spartans, the Macedonians, the Athenians, the Corinthians, the Thessalians, and so on… they are all from that region. Then you have cities, city-states, colonies across the Mediterranean, the world’s first democracy.
However, it is not one of my favorite periods in history. It happened so long ago, and I only remember bits and pieces from when I learned it in school at age 11.
I love history, but when I very much enjoy it, I read books about it in my spare time. I can’t remember a single book I’ve read on Greek history, though—but I’m open to recommendations if you have any!
Greece's global impact
Nonetheless, blockbuster movies such as Troy and 300 help shape our imagination of the grandeur of such times.
The Olympics started there, and to this day we pay homage to them in every Olympiad. Greeks are the first to enter the Olympic Stadium (or Maracanã, in Rio 2016, or the Seine, in Paris 2024), and the Greek flag is hoisted in the closing ceremony as a nod to the origins of the Games.
Greece has clout. It punches above its (current) weight.
In addition to its history and sports, its mythology is one of the best-known in the world and one of the most influential. The Romans, for instance, highly admired the Greeks and shaped their gods after the Greek gods.
Movies and books up to this day have been influenced by their mythology. Some more, such as Disney’s Hercules or Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, some a bit less, with only a few elements borrowed, such as the Harry Potter series. In a way, however, all of them were influenced by it, since drama, and theater, originated there.
Greek philosophers were some of the greatest early thinkers of humanity, shaping much of the Western world in fields from Mathematics (Pythagoras and Euclid) and Humanities (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) to Medicine (Hippocrates), to list a few.
Even the word Economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία (oikonomia). Oikos means “household,” and nomus means “way,” so Economics is the “way to manage a household.” Before Adam Smith, there was Xenophon.
Greek language in daily life
Undisputedly, the Greek language has highly shaped our vocabulary. Just ask any doctor. Sciences aside, it also influenced many words we use daily.
They held on to their alphabet, so noticing the commonalities while there is not immediately obvious, but I did start picking up some words if I paid close attention to them.
Some examples:
Φατούς = fattoush
σαλάτα = salad
βοτανικός = botanic
οφθαλμός = ophtalmo
φαρμακείο = pharmacy
βεστιάριο = cloaking room (this one is basically the same word for dressing room in Portuguese: vestiário, which triggered me to start attempting to read stuff in Greek)
I may or may not have taken more math classes than I should have.
We owe a lot of our foundation to the Greeks—even though we take a lot of it for granted.
Why I ended up in Greece
The irony is that I didn’t go there because of all these cultural influences.
I went because I’ll meet my sister and my mom in Turkey and I was in the Balkans. Greece was in the way and I figured my world tour wouldn’t be complete without going to Greece.
As such, I stopped in Thessaloniki for a day and Athens for a few days.
Thessaloniki: a seaside tease
Thessaloniki, in today’s Macedonia, was a nice introduction to Greece. After such a long time in Central and Eastern Europe, where I explored many Old Towns and hiked in a few mountains, seeing the sea again felt special.
Born and raised in Rio, I grew up steps away from the beach, and I’m always in my natural element when close to the ocean.
To my disappointment, however, there was no beach per se in Thessaloniki. At least not around the main part of the city, where I was staying.
A coastal town, Thessaloniki has a considerable port, but no sand where you can kick back and relax.
Athens: the heat, the crowds, the highlight
From there, I headed to Athens, where, in theory, I could go to the beach approximately 1 hour away. Yet, I was heading to Bodrum anyway, so decided to just take it easy during my short stay.
Even the heat in Athens wasn’t enough to make me cave and head to the shore. It made me wonder why it was so busy when you can probably go there in other seasons. It then hit me: people do a two-day stop there on their way to the islands.
I also saw many people wearing college shirts, something I hadn’t seen a lot of since I left the US, especially in the weeks leading up to my short Greek stay, in countries such as Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and North Macedonia.
Greece attracts that passerby kind of tourist, checking a sight off the list and adding it to their highlight reel.
Of course, I knew that going in, but it reminded me that I was back on the beaten path, in a way.
Sightseeing and a camera in hand
Lots of tourists mean sights are busy, but there is no way around it. I decided to only go to some of the main ones: the Acropolis, the Acropolis Museum, and the Benaki Museum. It would be disrespectful not to.
The Acropolis was worth it. I went there on a Sunday afternoon, right before sunset. You can see all of Athens and even the Aegean Sea from there, and the sunset atop the mountain is nothing short of breathtaking.
I spent a couple of hours there, playing with my new camera and taking pictures of everyone and everything. My little moment of “Humans of NYC,” but “Humans of the Acropolis” instead.
Giving photography a shot
What I wanted to do, however, was to take my tripod with me.
I’m not a photographer.
In fact, I never really started to take photos until it became a non-negotiable feature in our phones.
Growing up, my mom had one of those film cameras. She wouldn’t let me get close to it. After all, a kid wouldn’t know how to use it and I would, therefore, waste her films.
As such, I always looked at photography as not something for me. Then, as a teen, digital cameras were very popular, and soon phone cameras were also ubiquitous.
So, I never bothered. Nowadays, we take many pictures, but they are often mindless.
My phone sufficed—until I decided to go on this journey. I figured it would be foolish to travel around the world and not have a proper camera. So I decided to buy not one, but two cameras.
Camera #1: potentially underutilized
I got an entry-level mirrorless Canon. They’re lighter than DSLRs, less bulky, and they do wonders. It also came with two lenses, which let me play with different types of shots.
Still, I feel like someone who hasn’t enrolled in Driver’s Ed taking their parent’s car for a spin. On my first stop, my cousin’s husband, an excellent photographer, taught me the basics.
Other than that, I’ve just been trying to self-learn as I go. Every now and then I find a new feature on my camera, and I have no clue what to do with it.
Lots of trial and error. At times, I wish someone who knows what they’re doing could teach me how to take my skills to the next level.
In terms of photography, three months into my trip, I’m a noob.
Camera #2: the “pic of the day” project
My other camera is a point-and-shoot Rollei. It’s a film camera I got for a pet project during this trip.
I believe we take way too many pictures these days. As I said before, a lot of it is very mindless.
So, I bought this film camera to be more intentional about my pictures.
With it, I take one picture every day.
Just one.
This forces me to be intentional about it. I have one shot, so it has to be good.
It makes me think of what and who will be in the picture, when and where I’ll take it, and if I’ll ask someone to take it for me (and, if so, who that will be).
My goal is to develop them once I finish the trip and look back at my memories. From each and every day.
The “picture of day” experiment seemed to go well for the first roll. Though I’m still to find out whether this guy walked in right in front of the camera in the Coliseum
The second roll, however, was going fine until the last shot. In Lake Bled, my roll got stuck midway through shot #37.
I thought it was perhaps the last shot of the roll, but it should have rewound automatically.
It didn’t.
I tried pressing the button for it to rewind. I could hear it trying to. Nothing worked.
I then manually removed the roll (in a room that I hope to have been dark enough), and tried putting a new roll.
The camera just wouldn’t take it.
Bummer.
My new pet project had died a mere two months into the trip.
How had I broken the camera? I have no idea.
A not-so-hard fix
In Sarajevo, one of my next stops, I went to a camera repair shop as one of my first stops.
I was hoping it would be an easy fix. They told me, instead, that the magazine was likely broken. It would take too long for them to fix it and it would be likely as expensive as a new one.
Sure, there are worse things in life, but I was a bit disappointed. I tried and tried finding someone else to repair it, to no avail. In the next countries I went to, I didn’t even bother.
But I decided to give it another go in Athens. After all, as a main destination, I had to find someone who would know a thing or two about cameras. Maybe they would even have the spare part in stock? I’m an optimist at heart.
On Monday, around noon, I got to the first store: “We don’t fix film cameras”. Ok… onto the second store.
I arrived and showed the camera, with a film in it that just wouldn’t be rolled in, to the guy tending to the shop.
“There is some type of error”, I said. “See, it says ‘E’ in the display. I just don’t know what could be wrong with it”
He removed the film, as I hadn’t taken a single shot with it, and performed a few tests. First, he rewound it. “Sounds fine”, he said. Then, he inserted a test film into it. The camera rolled it in and he shot a photo.
“Now, let’s try with your film again”, he said, proceeding to insert it.
Almost like magic, the camera rolled the film in. The display showed “1”, meaning it would be the first shot of the film. “E stands for ‘empty’, not ‘error’”, he added. Then he explained to me that I was pulling the film way too far out, and because of that the camera wasn’t rolling it in.
I left the store feeling a bit embarrassed. Now, I don’t pretend to be a skilled photographer, but that was such a basic mistake.
Noob by day, pro by night
But I didn’t let that kill my mood. I carried on about my day, went back to the hostel for a few hours to escape the heat, and then proceeded to the Hill of the Nymphs, a viewpoint of the Acropolis with an amazing sunset.
The previous day I had been to the Acropolis, without my tripod. Such places hardly allow them because they are disturbing to most, but I figured it would be fine to take it to a place nearby where entry isn’t restricted and anyone can stroll in.
I got there around 6 pm. I started setting it up and, even before I was done, this security guy came over telling me that professional photography wasn’t allowed on that hill because it was an archeological site.
Amazing, I thought. Just 6 hours ago I was that idiot who couldn’t put a film inside a camera, now I was a pro just because I have a tripod.
He kept arguing: “Your tripod is very large, so you must be a professional”.
Holding myself from laughing, I went on to explain that I was far from a professional.
I told him that it was just a new hobby for me, that my camera had nothing special about it, and that he could check my social media to see that I’m not selling my photos to National Geographic.
In other words, if I depended on my camera to eat, I’d be a very skinny man.
He then let me stay there, stating that if his boss showed up, I would tell him that I had been warned.
Done deal.
Then I stayed there for the next few hours, watching the Acropolis as the sun set behind me, and playing with the shutter speed, exposure, focus, and my two humble lenses.
In between a shot or two, people would walk up to me and ask for me to take their pictures. Having the tripod set up automatically made me the official unofficial photographer of the Hill of the Nymphs.
The joy of small moments
I didn’t mind and it also made for, at times, good conversation, with people that I normally don’t walk into. For example, while there I met this British guy who was a professional gambler, who was also solo traveling, and we chatted through the whole sunset and then grabbed beers at a nearby pastry shop (yes, pastry shop).
These are the small moments that make solo travel special.
On a side note, it was also funny that the fact that I had my tripod set up gave me a sort of “authority” over the area immediately in front of me. Countless times, even when I wasn’t using the camera, people would ask me if it was ok to get closer to the edge of the hill for a picture.
Maybe the tripod was the travel hack I didn’t know I needed?
Post Scriptum
PS: I jinxed it. After I wrote this piece, I headed to the beach in Bodrum to kick back and relax, hoping for a nice sunset shot after reading and tanning for a few hours.
Then, the Rollei didn’t turn on, though the camera lens remained open.
So, the shutter might be jammed, or maybe I need new batteries. Or it might be a completely different issue.
Either way, my film camera happiness only lasted 4 shots, and I will try fixing it again in Istanbul.
Upcoming Itinerary
📍June 9–10 — Bodrum, TR
📍June 11–15 — Istanbul, TR
💬 What do you think? Have you had your own “photographer transformation” moment? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Bio
Hi, I’m Guido, a Brazilian traveler who spent 13 years in the US before life nudged me toward a long-awaited dream: a year of exploring the world. I started this page to share my journey with family and friends, but if you’ve found your way here, I’m grateful you came along!