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December 23, 2009
“Fate solo l’albero o anche il presepe?”
Do you just put up the Christmas tree or you do the Nativity scene too?.
I’ve been asked this question many times. I always answered “Both”.
In the last years I started answering “The second at home, the tree stays on the balcony”… I do love giving this answer for two reasons:
1) I want to slightly underline the fact that in my house the Nativity set is the most important thing to “create” for Christmas time… at least, I think that at home I should be free to have my ideas… 
2) Enjoy the first smile/laugh that is followed by: “What? Are you serious?”, and then enjoy the expression on people’s face when they understand that I’m 100% serious and the tree stays really on the balcony. If you don’t believe me, you simply have to or… just use a little of imagination…
I don’t remember the precise year we started, surely Christmas 2004… that’s what a picture data tell… that’s the proof-picture:
In 2005 I took this this picture:
(Here you are supposed to use your imagination to realize that tree is outside…)
Someone defined this a “no-picture”. I’ll never understand what he meant with the definition “no picture”.
I love to take no(serious)-picture, so here you are the Xmas-2008 version:
The tree decorated this year is being our “Christmas Tree” for the 3rd time. That’s an event!
Usually trees didn’t survive for more than a Christmas season…
The first time we started decorating the tree outside it probably helped the tree to survive for a second Christmas season… but it didn’t happen often…
And since we give food to sparrows the Christmas tree survives for longer and in a better way. We’ve notice this fact the last year. My theory was that the tree was “happier” to be surrounded by birds
that jump all around it and stay often on its branches and who “manure” it. My family and my boyfriend considered it a “crazy theory”… but it’s not important, I just wanted to make them smile with such a theory and I’ve got what I wanted
Now I, seriously, start thinking that birds probably eat parasites that come on the tree… 3 Christmas season is an extraordinary thing
What about the Nativity set?
No hurry, the 24th is tomorrow
December 22, 2009
… and wanted tho show it
December 21, 2009
21st December
Today is my cousin’s birthday.
Today, 3 years ago, I discovered that one of my best friend had a cancer, (who died a few months later).
Tonight died a person who was very close to my boyfriend. Today I tried to comfort, with caress, smile and hugs my boyfriend…
Today I finally had the chance to give a “thanking” present to a friend. In May she told me about a photography contest that I won (500€). Today she was smiling and seeming really happy to receive the little presents I gave her. We had a lovely hour of conversation.
As always, today, happy events mixed up with sad ones.
I usually tend to think: “Darn! There is always something that waste beauty”… but today, for some weird reason, i realized that all these events, in a way or another, have a common positive aspect: speak of love.
Love for a family member living miles away but thanks internet you can send her the best birthday wishes.
Love for a friend who is suffering, who suffered, but you’ll never forget.
Love for a family member, who you are going to say “goodbye” for a last time… on this earth. Love for your boyfriend who looked like as a silent and gloomy five years old child, all day long.
Love for friends, that help friends in exchange for nothing, or that enjoy to “pleasantly surprise” friends with an unexpected present…
Kindness helps, always.
I wanted to write a note about all these events. I wanted to link them with those picture of “flowers on a black background” I so love to take… because I think that sometimes “sad” events might “highlight love” as a black background can “highlights” colors, details, light.
December 20, 2009
I would like to talk to you about something happened almost an year ago.
For Christmas 2008 me and my boyfriend bought 2 new cellphones. The day we started using them… till now, nothing strange… but, I think that day we were a funny show to see.
I turned my cellphone on and started surfing through the menu, and the various cellphone options and set what I wanted to set and started using the cellphone camera.
My boyfriend “studied” the user manual from the first to the last page and than started using the cellphone… of course he can use it better than I do, now.
That’s us.
I’m the crazy, messy, irrational girl. He’s the calm, rational and tidy boy.
He goes to sleep at 11pm, I tend to stay awake all the night… we substantially talk only in afternoon and early nights
Despite all these differences (there are many others that I didn’t list) I think we are an almost perfect match, the complementary of each other. With time we’ll see if I’m right.
I think this site is a good example/proof of this match
I’m the one that takes the pictures you can see here and cares about the graphics. He is the one that studies how to do site and create its structure. This is a kind of “house” we are building and “he builds it and take cares of house services” and “I take care of the interior design”. Without an house all furniture are useless, and house with no nice furniture is a cold useless and empty house
That’s the way we spend our spare time. Despite all those typical “couple activities” we spend a lot of time taking care of this site. I’ve an idea about a new layout? I talk with him and he tries to figure out how to turn that idea into a fact.
So, it’s all thanks him that now the site and blog has a new layout that is closer to my idea of the “ideal site”, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
There is still a lot to do, but I’m really glad of what happened till today.
This post wants to be a special thanks to that boy that stands my craziness, with whom I argue almost everyday but that fills my day and probably the only one who truly trust the chance that maybe, someday, my dream will come true. Surely he is the only one who is giving a concrete help.
Thanks Don Ema ;P
December 19, 2009
…any doubts?
December 15, 2009
It was my last high school year and the “7th month” I had my new DSRL camera
That day I went with school to a local museum about WWII. If I’m not wrong it is mainly focused on American Army landing in Sicily, but it talks about that period in general too. It was pretty interesting.
After the visit I had a little walk with 5-6 classmate who were going home alone, and my father came to pick me and bring me back home.
I asked him if he could brought me to seafront before coming back home. I love the sea
The sea that day was amazing, a little rough, or “angry” as we say here… But I finally had the chance to get this:
I had always found fascinating the way the sea splash against the coast when it’s rough. Not too rough, but rough enough to do nice water games.
I had to take some pictures before getting this, for some weird reason I was unable to coordinate my click with the splash.
I’ll always remember the way I isolated from the rest of the world, the way I focused only on wind and waves trying to let them “virtually” rock me. I wanted to understand them.
That’s one of the reason that make me love photography.
While taking pictures happens that you’ve to 100% focus on your subject. You’ve to do your best to understand it.
And… even if you’re 100% alone almost each time you take a picture, you never feel lonely or gloomy as you might feel in group of people not talking with you.
Sea, flowers and everything you can take a picture of doesn’t care if you’re an amazing person or not… it’s all there, for you too.
All the world ask you only to be humble enough to focus on it.
I hope I’ll soon be able to get a similar shot from a more frontal perspective and who knows, now, after 4years I’m probably a little better photographer and I’ll be able to show the “angry” sea in a better way.
December 14, 2009
I don’t pretend to do great HDR, but I do love what you can get with HDR “technique”.
Starting from these:
to end up with this:
December 13, 2009
On Friday afternoon I tried to pass a written test, that’s why I disappeared for a little while… I don’t know the result yet.
I’m trying to cleaning up old picture folders in order to finally get that “whole” copy in a couple of external HD
I’ve already filled 50% of the iMac HD and I’ve to save so many pictures…
The problem is that when I start cleaning up and find old pictures I star recalling all events related to each shot. Even if those are 8 years old or more… I found pictures of baby Elisa too:)
But “recalling past” might be not a problem yet, I mean, you can keep cleaning up while recalling. The real problem comes when I find “interesting” shots.
With “interesting” I mean those shots that are not special, that at the time I’ve taken them I put them in a “not good” imaginary folder but, that, now I’m reconsidering them. I edit them a little. I get new ideas and I start following endless paths… stopping any cleaning up activity.
My boyfriend says it’s typical of creative, another friend says that as any human I’m imitating God, that first create, in apparently random way and then gives an order and gives life to things that “are not”.
I wonder if it’s just a sign of mental disorder…
Among the shots I found tonight there is this one:
A red cloud! I later showed it to my boyfriend and to a friend and they both said: “COOL! It’s amazing”.
Huh?! Are they serious?
I don’t know why they like it… and I’m not so sure I wanna know the reason
I was curious to see when I’ve taken this picture and discovered:”2nd March 2007″. To the world it means nothing probably, but it’s exactly the day before my boyfriend “declared” his love to me (I already knew, but we all need an official day ;D ).
I couldn’t avoid to tease him and saying: “See? The sky was telling that it was going to happen something of terrible and dangerous in a few hours! Who knows if it was and advice for me, for you or for the whole world!”.
My bf laughed, could he do something different with such a crazy girlfriend like me?
December 4, 2009
Nonessential, unusual and inefficient
Probably the only one in this place and time, and stronger than I appear. Probably not.
Definitely alive, real and loved
December 3, 2009
November is over, therefore I’ll start to post again colorful pictures if I wish, or black&white as well.
In a few days I’ll try to pass a written test but yesterday I spent the WHOLE day cleaning up my room… I usually do this when I’m “free from school”, but yesterday morning I realized my room was too full of dust. In theory I’m allergic to dust. At least, that’s what a doctor declared, about 13 years ago, after he had gave me the impression of having mistaken my arm with a pincushion…
Since I’ve seen the amount of dust I found yesterday in my room I think it was just an amazing joke, as much as it was the fact I was allergic to chocolate. Who knows me would think that I’d rather like the idea of walking naked along a crowded street than the idea of not eating chocolate for a too long time. I do love chocolate ^_^ [And it's sure I'll never walk naked along a crowded street 
]
Ok, I’m “serious” again… why should I talk about my day? Because yesterday, while I was cleaning up I moved an old toy that probably belonged to my daddy when he was a child, it is kind of clown. A second later I moved it at least three spiders run away from that toy…
AAAAAAH! I hate spiders… a few years ago I’d have run away from the room yelling. Yesterday I was too annoyed by the sight and at least one finished in the vacuum cleaner, and a couple moved to the 2D dimension…
I’m truly sorry, I hate killing animals, but I do hate spiders and as many other animals they are not allowed in my room.
I mean, there’s plenty of space out there, my room is less than 10 square meters, have they to stay here? My boyfriend loves spiders, why don’t they visit him?
Anyway, my second reaction was to suddenly put that poor clown outside my room, on the balcony. I threw it on clotheshorse without caring of it or other spiders anymore.
At evening both me mom had pity of that poor guy and she made it sit on a chair on the balcony (it still doesn’t have the “green card” for my room), and it was a funny sight this morning:
I wondered how it looked like at sunrise… an old, sad, clown watching sunrise while he was lonely sitting on a plastic chair…
I thought it might be “charming” somehow.
