Relax At The Rapallo’s Marina

I remember walking past this café terrace at the marina in Rapallo and being drawn to the contrasting energies it contained. In the foreground, a woman in a red dress sits absorbed in her magazine, her body language completely self-contained. Just beyond her, a small group of older men and women are animated in conversation, their faces alive with expression. The scene felt like two parallel worlds inhabiting the same space—private quiet and social exchange—separated only by a few metres of wicker furniture.

The colour red became the unifying element. The woman’s dress, the handbag on the sofa beside her, and the clothing of the woman facing away from the camera form a chromatic thread that guides the viewer through the frame. Even the café’s sign above, with its red awning, reinforces this visual link.

Compositionally, I tilted the frame slightly, more out of instinct than calculation, to give the scene a casual, lived-in feeling, as if the viewer were just passing by rather than standing at a perfect vantage point. The diagonal lines of the furniture and flooring help offset the potential static quality of a seated subject.

Technically, the midday light was diffused by the awning, preventing harsh shadows but still allowing for detail in the skin tones and textures of the wicker. The exposure held well across the frame, though the busy background required careful balancing in post to prevent it from competing too aggressively with the foreground.

For me, this image works because it resists the temptation to focus solely on the obvious. The woman in red may seem the subject, but the murmuring conversation behind her is just as much part of the photograph’s quiet rhythm. It’s an everyday slice of Rapallo life—unpolished, unposed, and perfectly ordinary.