Italy Travel Photography Journal | Katie Lozancich

One of my favorite ways to explore Europe

is to wander through the streets with a camera in tow. The best moments happen when you don’t have a particular agenda and can simply roam. One moment you’re weaving through cobblestone alleyways, and the next, you find yourself in a thriving piazza.

This spring, my partner and I traveled through Italy with friends, exploring Cinque Terre, Finale Ligure, Porto Santo Stefano, and Rome. The bulk of our trip was spent mountain biking, but we made plenty of time for slow mornings, long dinners, and wandering through cities with cameras in hand.

For this trip, I left my full camera kit at home and opted to travel with a Fujifilm X100VI. (Not sponsored — just genuinely impressed.) It felt strange not bringing my Canon R5 and a lineup of lenses, but honestly, it was also a breath of fresh air not hauling a 25-pound camera bag through airports. Running to a gate with that thing is not fun.

This was my first time really spending time with the Fuji, and I came away incredibly impressed. The image quality and colors are beautiful, and I loved how easy it was to stash the camera in my purse or wear it over my shoulder throughout the day.

With these images, I tried to capture small snippets of daily life in Italy — drawn especially to the colors, textures, light, and rhythm of the places we explored. Photographing everyday moments while traveling always reminds me why I love documentary storytelling so much in the first place.