Photographing Over-Tourism In Florence

Crowds gaze at the Ponte Vecchio in Florence

I write this knowing my city-break to Florence is exactly part of the problem I am writing about. Bearing that in mind, let’s take a look at over-tourism in Florence, one of the world’s most beautiful and historic cities.

Florence had 15m visitors in 2024, and increasing pressure on the city from industrial-scale sightseeing is taking its toll. Residents decry the decimation of traditional artisan workshops, gentrification, a housing crisis and ever-increasing prices. The council has banned self-checkin key safes from short term rental buildings, and is cracking down on licensing of rental accommodation. There are even guides for how to avoid over-tourism in the city. It couldn’t be that bad, could it?

On arrival in the city after the usual appalling air travel disasters (it seems impossible to just get from A-B without a litany of chaos these days), I was immediately struck by how stunning it is. The golden stone buildings, azure blue sky, incredible architecture. They all smash you in the face as if to say “Check this out, we know how to do this in Italy”.

Staying near the centre, our lovely hotel was ideally placed for seeing all the sights, just like the thousands and thousands of other people that were there. It was early October, well away from high season, with all the kids back at school. Venturing out on our first full day, I was astounded by the huge press of people everywhere we turned. Walking tours took over pavements. Throngs queued to get into the Duomo. The Ponte Vecchio bridge laboured under the weight of the masses crossing it.

I find I am becoming increasingly creative as I get older, and I decided to try and capture how this all felt to me. This exhausting, ever moving press of humanity. The self-centred social media addicts getting annoyed when someone walks through “their shot”. The tour groups surging like supertankers from one sight to the next.

I also thought there could be a very crisp point to be made. Venice has recently cracked down on over-tourism, charging a fee for entry to the centre and banning cruise ships that disgorged their insta-hungry hordes into the already packed St Mark’s Square. It is becoming an increasing problem in European cities. How could I portray how this all felt to me?

I decided to use my in-camera compositing technique (description and method here) to try and visually describe all of this.

The Duomo (Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore) appears to spew out humanity onto the pavement

On a romantic couple’s trip like this, I hate interrupting the flow to indulge in my photography habit. This is especially the case when each of these photographs can take fifteen minutes or more to make. Composed of 30-50 individual images which the camera, a Ricoh GR3x HDF, overlays in-camera, it takes quite some time, concentration and thought. Thankfully Suzie is incredibly understanding. We always manage a balance between Suzie visiting cathedrals and churches and museums, and me photographing bits of them and their surroundings.

A quick recap of this photography technique if you didn’t click the link above. The Ricoh GR3x HDF has a composite shooting mode, which allows you to overlay a sequence of images on top of each other as you take them. The camera processes the overlays in real time (though with about a 10-second delay between shots), seemingly allowing an infinite number of images to be composited. I still haven’t had the patience to find the limit yet. This is unlike other cameras with compositing modes like the Fuji X100VI, which only allows nine images to be overlaid and you have to chose the number of images before you start shooting.

This has turned into my favourite technique to create a different, impressionist-style output which can look epic, but can also look rubbish. It is important to have the right subject matter and composition to avoid the result looking like you’ve had 20 cups of coffee and eight Red Bulls. While I am getting to grips with the process, there is still quite a lot of trial-and-error involved in creating something compelling.

Crowds blocking the street outside the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, home to Michaelangelo’s statue of David.

Turning to the task of capturing the masses of people on the streets of Florence using this compositing method, the first challenge as with all photography is to find a good composition. This meant being at the main “attractions” of the city and figuring out how to create a compelling image that simultaneously shows the beauty of the city and the press of humanity.

A single frame can easily show a crowd. It can show how big it is, what people are wearing, and where they are. But by using compositing I am adding how it feels to be there. Walking down the Via Ricasoli, home to the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze (above), home to the Statue of David, is an ordeal of shuffling, shoving and surging, all while avoiding treading on the garbage “paintings” offered by illegal street vendors and dodging delivery cyclists. The beautiful glowing yellow stone of the gallery glows under morning light, while people move to-and-fro queueing or buying tickets to queue or whatever else.

I did a couple of compositions of this location, both created by taking a shot, moving a step or two, taking another shot, as I kept out of everyone’s way in doorways along the wall. The best one is the shot above. The other is looking in the opposite direction looking towards the Duomo. The one above is more successful, with the left to right “flow” of people reading very nicely for the viewer. If you look carefully you’ll see the individual people’s faces, clothing and so on, which makes these pictures really engaging to spend some time with.

Crowds gather around the golden doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni

Reviewing images on the back of the camera, I found I was getting the best results when there was a clear and obvious setting in the background to be the “stage” for the crowds that moved around it. This is particularly the case for the second image in this article of the entrance to the Duomo. While the shot shows the throngs of visitors going into the cathedral, the impression is very much one of the cathedral vomiting out an endless spume of human detritus. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but that is how it feels to me when I see that particular image. One viewer said “it looks like World War Z”, the Brad Pitt movie about invading hordes of zombies.

Getting a bit more up close and personal, the following image is rather more in-your-face. I had several tries at photographing the crowds on the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge over the Arno River. According to the guide on the walking tour we did, the bridge was once the home of the butchers of Florence during the Great Plague, keeping them and their product’s smell and guts away from the residential areas of the city and allowing their waste to be disposed of straight into the river. In 1565 a decree was made to clean up the bridge by banning butchers and only allow jewellers and goldsmiths, resulting in the collection of shops we see there now over 500 years later.

From the south side of the Ponte Vecchio looking north.

You’ll see some of the other images from Ponte Vecchio in my Impressions of Florence gallery, but I prefer this one as it de-anonymises the mass of people and makes the image a lot more personal. It is also a much better composition than my other attempts of getting a shot on the bridge itself. This is because there are large areas of bright sunshine and shadow along the bridge. I was finding I was losing the “people” in the shadows. By moving further towards the end of the bridge I was able to shoot at a point where a shaft of sunlight crossed the walkway. As people emerged into that shaft of light, they stood out really well against the shaded backdrop.

Again I tried to create a dynamic composition with strong angled lines, positioning the brightest area off to the left side with the lines of the buildings shooting off to the right, resulting in a feeling of emergence of a huge number of humans being disgorged by the bridge. The golden light and the deep brown shadows help to lend an air of richness to the scene, befitting all the gold and gems on show in the shops along the bridge. The overall feeling is one of closeness, claustrophobia, movement and pressure.

Now I am getting more familiar with this compositing technique, I find I can concentrate more on compelling compositions which improves the end result significantly.

The five shots in this article demonstrate the pressure on the city from the tourist industry. As always, there are pros and cons with such things. The money spent by tourists must be astronomical, employing thousands in the city. Life for local residents must be a misery though, as industrialised sightseeing has seemingly taken over the place.

Creating each of these pictures is rather tricky and time consuming, and I have many rejects that won’t see the light of day. I am very pleased with the small selection that I have come away with. They do the most difficult thing - despite being just two dimensional, they get across how the centre of Florence feels. Your other senses are activated. You can feel the press, hear the noise, even smell the mass of humanity.

Thanks for reading.