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Description
Why do you travel?

To see the grandeur of the world, in all of its beauty and atrocity, to see the faces of the young and the old and to hear the stories, the ordinary and the extraordinary, behind them all.

On one of our many, many visits to cafes in Italy (those caffeine shots don't just fall from the sky, y'know), we ran into this man. Ever come across a random face in the crowd that made you stop and wonder about the person behind it? This was my man in Florence.

There was something about him that made me finally pluck up the courage to try my hand at portraits. It's the first time I've ever asked that of a stranger. I've never been thick-skinned enough to ask outright. But there was something different about this character... perhaps it was the easiness in his grey eyes beneath those hooded lids, or the uneven slope of the shoulders and the mass of grey hair that betrayed his age, or simply the wrinkles that framed his face whenever we asked for another cuppa and he smiled somewhat lopsidedly.

I wonder what things he's seen in his lifetime? I wish there was time to stay and have a chat, and to listen to tales told from a different perspective.

He'll probably never get to see this, but here is my tribute to him anyway, and to all the others in cafes large and small, who kept us alive and running with a simple cup of bona fide freshly-brewed Italian espresso those ten days in a foreign land. No one does coffee like the Italians.

Description
Why do you travel?

To see the grandeur of the world, in all of its beauty and atrocity, to see the faces of the young and the old and to hear the stories, the ordinary and the extraordinary, behind them all.

On one of our many, many visits to cafes in Italy (those caffeine shots don't just fall from the sky, y'know), we ran into this man. Ever come across a random face in the crowd that made you stop and wonder about the person behind it? This was my man in Florence.

There was something about him that made me finally pluck up the courage to try my hand at portraits. It's the first time I've ever asked that of a stranger. I've never been thick-skinned enough to ask outright. But there was something different about this character... perhaps it was the easiness in his grey eyes beneath those hooded lids, or the uneven slope of the shoulders and the mass of grey hair that betrayed his age, or simply the wrinkles that framed his face whenever we asked for another cuppa and he smiled somewhat lopsidedly.

I wonder what things he's seen in his lifetime? I wish there was time to stay and have a chat, and to listen to tales told from a different perspective.

He'll probably never get to see this, but here is my tribute to him anyway, and to all the others in cafes large and small, who kept us alive and running with a simple cup of bona fide freshly-brewed Italian espresso those ten days in a foreign land. No one does coffee like the Italians.