Trails of History by Alain Ceccaroli

On Saturday, after watching the start of the rally, we stopped for a drink to pass the time until our next sight-seeing activity re-opened - a photography exhibition in the Great Arsenal.

From the piece we had seen about it on the "Crete News & Life" programme, we were expecting the photogrpahs to be of a tour of Eastern Europe - particularly of interest to us having just done one. Actually, though, the work was all pictures of Hania.

The pictures were part of a series of works by photographer Alain Ceccaroli exploring "different" cities unique for either their architecture, or the tragedies they have endured. Other subject for his photography have been Sarajevo, Mostar, and Aleph in Syria. The majority of the works were low-level lighting night shots of buildings. There were also some smaller black and white daytime shots.

I wasn't overly impressed to be honest. I think the mass proliferation of digital imaging technology must have really hit the professional photography artist hard. Although I couldn't achieve the same results as Alain using good old fashioned film, I no longer feel that there is a huge leap between the professional photographer and my own pictures - which I did feel five years ago when all I had to play with was a bog-standard 35mm camera. Now, with the features on my digital camera, and the ability to do easy post-production work in Photoshop, that has all changed.

There were a couple of great images though - one which must have been taken from the beaches near us of a rock in the sea in focus, with the night lights of Hania twinkling in the distance. Another was of a shell-like building near the new harbour, at night, but when it had puddles of water underneath it so that the structure was perfectly reflected.