You are currently browsing the archives for May, 2009.
May 26, 2009
It’s a so long time since I didn’t write…
Actually I wanted to keep the blog silent till the first day of June except for the 28th May (too busy days).
But, today I have been told I won €500.
The first prize of a photography contest. I didn’t go to the prize-giving because it was about 1.5-2 hours of car far and didn’t want to ask to my bf to drive so much and my father was busy. I feel so sorry for the people that organized the contest, they said everything is ok, but I still feel sorry for them.
This news, a surprise that made me smile for hours, gave water to my thirsty dreams… after such a long time, a little but always good news can help.
Anyway, today I need to relax so I have been cleaning up the last pictures I took on Sunday morning and I found this one…
And I felt like this little butterfly that tries to take-off, to go in a safer place, in a nicer place where no one will annoy “her”.
Or just moving somewhere else by instinct. At times it happens.
An taking pictures, somehow, brings me somewhere else where nobody think that is stupid to smile if a butterfly, the butterfly you have been trying to “catch” (in a picture) while it takes off, trust you enough to stay on your finger…
I do love when it happens.
I waited it for years.
It made me feel at peace,
at least for a few minutes…
See you soon.
May 17, 2009
Mosquitoes are annoying, but not scary — well, a huge group of them would scare me a bit, but fortunately I have never encountered one.
Cockroaches look a little “disgusting” to me, but I have learned to kill them (…at least when it is necessary…)
Spiders… I cannot stand them. I tend to kill them, but each time I try it, comes up to my mind how M1L (my boyfriend) that always tries to save them and blames me for being such a “killer”.
Trust me, I do my best to avoid to put them out of my bedroom *without* killing them… but usually I fail. Sorry!
But I have been close enough to a spider to take this…
Bees and their “relatives” scare me a lot! If I see one of them close to me I always wish to run away yelling out complains about the bee being there!
But I “control” myself, I just run away as fast as possible! ;D
But…today I was close enough to this…
The last 2 Sundays these little guys, seeking for food in my country house back yard, can have no peace!
Yeah, I overcame a lot of little fears thanks to my little baby (the camera)!
As you can see, my love, I never get tired to take pictures for ours, I don’t feel pain, unless I get really hurt!
Yeah, you know that, later, all the pain comes and I feel bad, really bad… but while I am taking picture I tend to feel only good things.
Even if I complain, at time, because I cannot find the subject for my pictures, but I generally feel good.
And, if there is you too, staying beside me, helping me, talking to me, smiling while you say “Here you are with the “researcher” gaze!”… well, it’s like a slice of Heaven on Earth, for me.
Can you remember my smile when I listen to Louis Armstong songs? Do you remember how he smiled while he was singing them?
That’s love!…not the physical one, of course.
And you know it, because even if it can be pretty boring staying beside me while I am taking picture… you are always there smiling at me (I got photographic proof!) and willing to be helpful for me.
P.s. Thanks to Chris for the help with the post! 
May 14, 2009
… Just didn’t want to start the post with an “I”.
Using it would make no sense because the goal is to make this blog a way to tell, or better to show, this world Beauty.
Too many words might “drown” the images and the whole blog would tell nothing.
Some one tell stories about words written along a series of line,
some one uses just “caught photons” decoded into pixel set on a series of lines,
and some others, or better something else, just tell about a branch age through a series of concentric lines.
We are all just trying to tell that amazing eternal story that is told day by day to all of us.
May 13, 2009
It seems yesterday, and ages ago at the same time…
The 13th May 2008 your daddy (my cousin) sent me a message to tell us you were born!. In the message he wrote also your name, your weight, your length and, not written, the infinite joy of your parents.
I remember I was studying math when I received that message. I don’t know what you’ll study at university but, trust me, that the kind of math I was studying is really “annoying”… but this message, or better your birth news, made me smile. I started to jump all around the house telling the news to my parents and to my brother.
I wish I were there, I wish I had hugged you at least once this year… but we live pretty far away, and old people can be so strange and boring at time. They (well I should say “we”, even if I am not so old yet!) always say to be “too busy”, and they never find time to meet who they love.
That’s OK, internet, the good use of it, solved the problem. I keep in touch with your daddy who fills my mail with picture of the wonderful creature you are.
Your daddy is a man of few words but, trust me, from those is easy to understand how deeply he loves both you and your mother.
And I hope, my little cousin, you will always feel and understand how much your parents loves you.
I hope you will never lose someone that loves you… at least, not too early.
You will be sad in your life, people will make you sad. You’ll surely argue with your parents (I don’t know your mommy very well but, sorry, I’m sure that on this side of your family we are pretty stubborn and your daddy is one of the hardest heads ;D).
I hope you will never feel homeless, that you will never miss someone’s love… but it can be possible…if it happens, I hope you’ll always remember what your parents will surely teach you: There is always Someone, that One that sent you to us, the Father we all share… Who will always love you and every living creature on this Earth.
A Love in front of which everyone, even the oldest man in the world, looks like a little bird requesting food to its parents…
…a Love we do need.
May 11, 2009
… and I thought about you!”
No, no, it’s not a typical sentence that my boyfriend tells me. It happens, but he is not the only one.
The more the time passes the more happens that someone (realtive, friends, classmate) comes close to me (or send an email) to tell me: “Hey… I have been thinking about when I saw an amazing show (sunset, a flower field, and so on), I wished I could take a good picture of what I was looking at… that’s how you came up to my mind”.
I know, I am not the best photographer in the world. Sure I am not!
The thing that mainly please me isn’t the fact that people think about me about “someone able to take a good picture”. I know that most of them with the proper camera would be able to take a great picture.
What really please me is the fact that people think about me when they see something of a such wonderful beauty that they wish to “save forever”.
That’s one of the main thing I want to do in my life: “helping” people to focus on that Beauty that can fill us completely… I try to do it by helping them focusing on it with pictures or by making them willing to focus more on it, to save it to preserve its memory.
And today happened again, a classmate of mine told me that yesterday she saw Mt Etna during sunset time, and that it was so wonderful that she thought she could take a nice picture, and she thought about me.
Few hours later I told her:”pick up a picture of mine, the one you like more…”. She chosen me this one:
Wow… looks like she loves sunsets! So do I ;D
She commented the picture too. I am trying to translate what she told me:
It’s amazing, looks like you have been able to cath nature power, unsteadiness and nostalgia.
It’s scaring but at the same time it’s attractive and you would like to lose yourself there forever.
And, at the same time, the picture doesn’t look like a picture at all!
It rather looks like a painting,
and it’s difficult to understand if it’s water, air or fire
there are the elements!
Wonderful!
She asked to be paid for the comment too! (she was kidding of course ;D)
I loved the comment, somehow she told most of the thing that made me take this picture.
I was being in one of my favorite place in my country house, I looked on the right and saw this show. I started yelling out:”Look up! Look up!”
My relatives all around there stopped looking at it, amazed.
It was 28th August 2005.
3 months after I got my camera, I was still trying to understand how to use it…but somehow, I had the “luck” to take this shot.
Well… actually…I have never tried to take pictures that look like paintings (part of me thinks that it isn’t good that a picture looks like a painting) but as Giulia, another classmate of mine (Elisa) and her sister liked the picture because it looked like a painting… and I have to admit that I like this picture also because it looks like a painting.
But I do love more that people enjoy it.
Sorry for the long post, but I thought it was worth
May 10, 2009
I didn’t want to write today.
OK, don’t think too loudly: “So, why are you still throwing “trash” on the internet?”…I can “hear” you! ;P
Just, I was going to sleep when I saw one of the pictures I have taken today…
I didn’t like it “so much” to post it on my website… I actually thought that the day went pretty bad… not many pictures taken, nothing went according to the plans.
But, at least, the today-pictures gave me a reason for a little laugh… recalling me the heavy bee going on small and light flowers, and making a lot of noise while flying… and me, trying to “catch” it “with a picture while it was flying”, but it looked to be doing its best to hide behind flowers.. tonight I have just found myself thinking what the bee could answer me back: “I am not hiding, I am just doing my duty… Stop bothering me!!”
Bzzz! 
.
Ok, I know it’s stupid, as well I know I need to go to sleep ;D
C’ya!
May 9, 2009
This year, as the last one, new born sparrows come to my balcony.
Yesterday, for the first time this year, a baby sparrow has been “left” on a plant on my balcony. It has been “twittering” for at least 2 hours around sunset time… a little annoying but at the end is a nice-sweet thing to see.
I don’t know if these little guys are “blind” or just reckless to let me getting so close to them… but I am happy I had a good chance to take a picture of it., despite the light was all gone already.
I feel like mama and daddy sparrow consider my balcony a kind of “baby parking” .
May 6, 2009
A more “personal” post…
Friendship can be pretty weird sometimes. It can transform a word, a simple word like Wednesday, in the most amazing word for a whole evening and even more…
What a laugh, that Wednesday of about 3 years ago! I don’t remember the precise day, neither what I was talking about with my friend, but I remember that at a certain point I wanted to say “Wednesday” and I couldn’t…
I don’t know the reason, but I was unable to read that word properly… my friend on the other side, first tried to remind me how to read “Wednesday”, soon later he started mocking me with his weird but lovely style. He started asking me, with a serious voice: “What day come after tuesday?” “What before Thursday?” and so on… I tried to answer a couple of time, but there was no chance. Wednesday wasn’t a word I could say that day.
I started laughing and I cried for the laugh, and my friend from “willing” to “mocking” started laughing with me, smiled (I knew when he was smiling) and than laughed with me.
Later I told him that sometimes Italians have big problem in reading English words, because we link just a sound to each letter, while in English sometimes it is different (“e.g. The “e” in “Elephant” or “send” and the “e” in seen are read in different ways, while in Italian we are used to read the “e” symbol only as in Elephant or send, doesn’t matter if there is one or more e… to not talk about dropped sounds alike the ending “e” in verbs alike “create”, Italians learning English would tend to read also the final e).
It has been difficult to explain this difference, but when he understood he started asking me to read in the “Italian way” some complex words, and I can assure you it has been a lot of fun.
I know, seen from outside it may look just a stupid situation… probably it is. But, what’s bad in it?
Few months before dying that friend talked with me via MSN for a last time.
He was pretty sick and for this reason he had problems to sit for a long time at the table. I showed him some pictures, as I was used to do, and among those picture there was this one:
(As always, click on the picture if you want to know “something more”).
He was really sweet and nice that last day we talked but he didn’t loose his weird humor and he started kidding that I should have sold the pictures, make money and send them to him. I told him that I preferred to save those money to go in the USA and visit him. He liked the idea, he smiled (I knew when he was smiling).
He has been the first person to think that I could earn some money from pictures. He was crazy enough to believe it as my boyfriend does now ;D
If it will happen, some day, I want to fulfill my promise. I will go to visit him in his town… What if I sell no picture? It doesn’t matter, I will go to visit him anyway .
But… imho…the nicest thing is that, when it’s Wednesday, sometimes, I whisper to myself “Wednesday” and this makes me smile…
All just to tell you something about the reason that made me choose this picture for the new gallery “Flowers” —> “Cyclamens”. I love it, there are a lot of good memories linked to that picture for me.
May 4, 2009
I have just created a new gallery: “Animals” —> “DRAGONFLIES” . At the moment there are only 4 pictures, I wish you’ll enjoy them anyway.
Below I want to share with you a little “note” I wrote on 18th November 2008:
Problems, pains and a lot of things can make life so awful that it seems almost no worth to live… but we have to go ahead and with time we learn that we have to deal with this negative aspects and most of the times we cannot overcome problems without the proper support.
This support can come from friends or relatives or “something else” that everyone reaches walking along his/her own way… one of these ways, in my case, is photography.
Taking pictures, in my case, is not only a way to appreciate that world beauty I wouldn’t notice otherwise, it’s also trough this “hobby” I can find a way to stand little problems alike pain, that famous “leg pain” that bothers me since I was 15 years old. It isn’t a big deal but it can be really annoying because sometimes I am slowed down by pain and it makes me complain a lot (Well… I am also really good at complain).
How can taking picture be a way to accept pain?
JUST… I have noticed that if I have to suffer “leg pain” started with no reasons seems like the biggest problem in my life, whereas, it is much easier to overcome if I decide to try to ignore it in order to take a picture! (Not always, but most of the time it works this way).
In the same way, I usually don’t complain if I start feeling pain because I had to adopt weird stances to shot pictures. I behave this way not because I have a “bad conscience” (I usually mock myself to have been clumsy) but because I have learn that this is a little price I have to pay for having the chance to “pin” in a picture a small but amazing part of that Eternal Beauty that created everything that surround us.
Looks like that the passion for photography and the conscience that trough it I can appreciate at least part of that Beauty, can work as a perfect painkiller!
To take this pictures I squatted down in front of this dragonfly for several minutes, my legs didn’t enjoy it, but I hope it was worth.
May 3, 2009
I am surely not the first person to be talking about Catania and/or about HDR. What’s wrong with this? Nothing.
HDR is a photography technique that consist in taking some pictures (>2) at different exposure level and elaborate them together in order to get only one picture. I guess you can learn more about HDR just clicking here.
The funny thing is that I have no patience for “studying” (A students in physics that hates to study?! Yeah, beside I am not as good as I wished in physics too, photography is fun for me at the moment, there is no way I can seriously “work” with this at the moment, so the idea to be “studying” something about photography is quite awful to me).
So I have just applied my technique of “chaotic learning”. I asked to a friend what I needed to get an HDR picture, and did some experiment.
First, almost an year ago:
CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT IT! ;D
Second, this summer:
CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT IT! ;D
Yesterday I shot 3 pictures to 2 different parts of the same building and, here you are the steps of what I did:
I mixed up the first 3 pictures, tried to correct perspective and here you are the final results:
Viale (“avenue”) XX Settembre #39. Catania.
Building named: “Palazzo Monaco” by engineer Luciano Nicolosi (1855-1947). Building in different styles.
I guess here you can notice part of the “Geometric frames” and the grating in decò-Empire style… forgive me, I am just a physics students trying to “translate” an old Italian book written in “artistic-architectural language” ;D
Viale (“avenue”) XX Settembre #39. Catania.
Building named: “Palazzo Monaco” by engineer Luciano Nicolosi (1855-1947). Building in different styles.
I guess here you can notice part of the “Geometric frames”, the grating in decò-Empire style and part of the caryatids and telamons (they human-looking sculpture) by Mario Moschetti.
Again…Please, forgive me, I am just a physics students trying to “translate” an old Italian book written in “artistic-architectural language” ;D
Be aware, monuments don’t look so colorful in reality, but neither as bad as in the first 3 pictures of each group. Those of you that can, COME TO SEE it is worth to do it! 
Actually… I don’t love edited pictures, but I am liking the result in this case.
I don’t know the reason… probably it’s due to my inability to take pictures to monument or due to my desire to “go somewhere else for a little while”…but I see in it a good, probably funny too, way to look at Catania.
It’s just an experiment-project I started yesterday (I will give more detailed information soon). I wished I could take more pictures, but after lunch I felt pretty bad and I had to come back home, my legs can be pretty mean sometimes.
I’ve been talking enough.
Wish a wonderful Sunday to all of you! ;D
May 2, 2009
Busy days, fortunately.
I hate doing nothing that amaze me. Who would like?
Yesterday I went to my country house (800 mt above sea level)… a lot of people here have a country house somewhere on Mt Etna. Anyway, yesterday was a cloudy day, so I had the chance to take only a couple of “on the average” shots. The taking off butterfly is one of those… I hope I can try to take a similar, but better, shots soon. I hope you will enjoy this.
I should be studying, but that’s a weird period of my life… anyway, I am fleeing to take some pictures around Catania, I want to picture Building in Liberty Style.
I will talk about it later.
Wish me luck! ;D
Have a wonderful day.
