Basilica – La Collegiata.

Picture taken in March 2006 while walking along “Via Etnea” (the basilica  is placed after the building on the left of this picture).

This is what Catania people call “the church/basilica of the Collegiata”, destroyed in the earthquake of 1693 that killed 2/3 of Catania people.

The basilica has been rebuilt later as much of the other things you can find in this little city… I might say other thing about this, but I’m too tired and lazy to translate this wikipedia page.

This is one of those pictures I want to go to take again now, and who knows, even get inside the church and take some other pictures…
There is a metro station pretty close to this area, and another metro station is not too far from my apartment. It solve car and parking car problems, and it’s pretty cheap if you consider petrol and parking cost, temptation is high! ;D

I’m being pretty busy in these days, going to be more in the next ones, therefore I’ll surf trough the endless archive. Pray for me, need help for several reason, nothing of terrible but… uff!

Random shot from archive

Something you can see from a park close to my house ^_^

31st December 2009, evening

This morning I heard a sad news about a friend that made me thinking about “sunset” and “last sunset” in a figurative sense too… All this thinking gave me the idea to ask to my boyfriend if he was OK with going out to take picture of the sunset.

As always, I was late and probably missed the sun set… but… I guess I cannot complain too much

I cannot complain because the sunset picture didn’t look so bad, I had just to turn back and notice this amazing “pink cloud”

And then I saw the moon

I didn’t know it was the full moon day today! Well it was also a blue moon day that brought a partial eclipse I missed!

Today it was unusually warm too. Despite in the morning the sky was cloud free at sunset time there were some cool clouds.

All these details made the moment being pretty similar to the moment when the webmaster declared his love to me on the 3rd March 2007, a full moon day with a total lunar eclipse, a warm day (close to spring time) and the kind of clouds up on the sky…similar scenarios of today ones. Lovely

Outside it’s a continue of little bomb explosion, a little stupid habit that many people have here… anyway… A little surprise happened… while I was climbing all around the little hill I went to take this pictures, I have taken this picture:

I didn’t think much about it, I’ve just taken it, but it turned out interesting… I want to try to take it again too.

And with this last shot I’m going to leave this computer spend the last 2 hours of the day with my family and with the webmaster via skype

I wish to all of you a wonderful 2010, even if there is still half world is still waiting to reach the new year

P.S. Especially sunset pictures have been taken thinking about a friend who had a sad day.

15th December 2006

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.

Have you ever listened to seagulls?

I love to go on Catania port dock and listen to them.

I’m pretty sure that the time I spent there with my boyfriend, taking pictures, will be one of the sweetest and nicest memories. Even among the funniest ones, ’cause last time I went there (10th October 2009) a ship sound scared most of them who started flying away passing on the deck and, the second after I ended saying “Hey! It’s just a ship!”, they started “freeing their stomach” and hit my boyfriend’s hand. Sweetie, he’s a little “monkish” but he didn’t complain that day! ^_^

These are the kind of memories that came up in my mind when I’m in my bed, feeling that pain that makes me a little unable to understand even what I read… these memories come back in my mind and comfort me, make me smile and dreaming of coming back there, again, or in a more beautiful and peaceful place.

I’d just like to love and to take pictures, I know I can do these things.
I’d just like to be able to really leave something of really beautiful on this earth, leave a slice of that real beauty that is unforgettable.

That Beauty, that “makes you homesick” that makes you saying “again, I wanna see it again”… as some people I met on the web said about the shots can be seen here.

But… I need time to do this in the proper way, and  every day I wonder if I’ll ever have that time. (Sorry, cannot keep too quite my daydreamer side )

One of the pictures I’ve taken the 10th October 2009, in order to solve a “minor problem” ;D

October shots

In the last post I talked about the fact I haven’t took pictures in October (except that picture to a red rose) since I’ve my DSLR.

I said that I needed to take some pictures in October (my way to say:”I’m going to do that”) and…

As usually happens when I really decide to do something ^_^

Just a quick selection.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Going back to study physics…  sob!

Mt Etna

New gallery online!

Here you are some picture of one of the 2 things I love of my Sicily: Mt Etna. According to wikipedia in Italian is named “mungibeddu” (“mount mount”, I think that it’s so big that sicilian considered useful to underline the fact it was as big as a mountain…:D) and in sicilian “muncibeddu” that means “our mountain”. I didn’t know it… but I won’t argue about what they say because I didn’t study much about Mt Etna name origins (especially because Italian and English wiki page don’t agree about the meaning of the name too, that’s kinda weird!), but I’m sure that people who speak Italian here just refer to it as “Etna” or “L’Etna” (The [mount] Etna). Mystery of knowledge…

As most of you know it’s a volcano, so it’s kinda fascinating and scaring as it erupts, but growing up here you “get used” to it. You understand it protects Catania from cold north winds and at times from big earthquakes when it erupts. Thousands of years ago, probably even more, there was no mountain there, now it’s so big and fascinating… isn’t our world fascinating?

The are many legends related to it, but this isn’t the place to talk about it…that I can find in Italian wikipedia but in English one I cannot find much more than this, probably I’m not using the proper words in the search field.

Ok, I give up in trying to give you more cultural information, I’ll come back in having a “personal” blog about pictures, so let’s see Mt Etna in my life…

I can tell a lot of things about, I love to look at it as much as I can and it’s one of the first “subject” I’ve tried to take “serious” pictures of.

From the airport you can see it clearly, indeed when I was 12 and left Sicily to go for 2 weeks in England (first time in my life outside Italy) I’ve been looking at Mt Etna as long as I could… I looked at it from the window of the airplane and tried to do a drawing of it. I did drawings of it and Sicily during all the 2 weeks in England. I was too young to left my house alone to “pretend” to study English in a way I could never learn it. I hated that travel from the deepest of my hearth, and was so joyful when I was coming back home. I was so happy that I’ve almost hugged the pilot of the airplane that took me back to Italy because he said me “Welcome” in Italian… and when I reached the airport, before caring about my bags, I hugged the first object that told me “You’re in Italy” only just because I couldn’t hug Mt Etna. Yes, I’ve always been a weird girl
Mt Etna and the sea are, now, the only “sign of Sicily” make me “feel at home” as I felt that day 10 years ago, at least for a few seconds.
The only signs that can make me smile and say “Wow, look how amazing it is!”, even when I’m in a really dark mood .

I see that everyone here loves the moumtain, in a way or another. Most of us are used to see it from one side that when happens to see a picture taken from another point of view we start wondering if it’s really Mt Etna. Kinda stupid, I know, but I think it’s “funny” and “interesting” at the same time

As you can see I do love taking pictures of Mt Etna with snow on it. In sicilian coast city, there is no snow… so it’s a little weird for us to see “so much snow” and, if I’ve to be a little proud of my land, even people from North Italy consider “strange” to see so much snow on a south Italy mountain. If we want to be silly Mt Etna is 100% Sicilian, silent but interesting and really dangerous if it gets angry

The pictures in the gallery are just 6 of the best I’ve taken with my reflex. I’m still thinking if doing a gallery about the 2002 Eruption. I’ve taken those pictures with a compact camera, an Olympus C-1 zoom, 1.3 mpx… but this is another fact.

[Numbering refers to the gallery sequence, not to the picture shown above]

My fave picture in this gallery is the first.

This is the last picture of of Mt Etna that I’ve taken. I took it on August 16th, early in the morning. As I’ve already told you. I hope to take more Mt Etna pictures with the polarizer.

The second and the third have been taken from the Catania port dock.

The 4th and the 5th have been taken in March 2008, at the end of a local way of the cross. The place we reach at the end of each WoC is amazing, I hope to get more shots of that place soon.

The 6th is the oldest. Christmas 2005, from the top of a building in Catania, close to the sea… a special picture for me, not for some particular beauty I see in it, but for what it recalls to me.

Hope you’ll enjoy them!

Weird syllogism?

I love the sea, I love taking pictures…

That’s the sea in winter,

it’s summer…

why shouldn’t I post this picture?  ;D

Longer, but nicer

Tomorrow morning I have a spoken test. The subject is what we call “Laboratory of Physics II”, it’s about electronic stuff and a lot of other things that might be interesting but, for various reasons, passing this test, for me,  become something of really difficult and annoying. (Just… I already tried to pass it in April…).

I don’t feel ready, but it’s ok.
I have to go ahead.I have to get these degree even if I regret I’ve chosen to study physics.

So, my old friend “sense of duty” made me studying today too, despite all the desire to go out for taking picture, or to go to the sea.
I have been reviewing stuff with the help of my boyfriend…and, I had a stupid problem in understanding a little thing, and this made me pretty upset.
Yeah, I am a very proud person…

By the way, I need to lie on a bed for a while, so at about 4 pm we went home but I asked to my friend to drive me home through the longest street but where I could see my Mt Etna

to which I shot picture from Catania port dock

That, I could see with the whole gulf

where it’s inserted, all while I was coming back home.

I hate to be living in Sicily, I feel like I hadn’t all the chances I could have in big cities… but I do love those “scenarios”.

They give me peace.

And when all those scenarios where going to disappear behind big buildings,… I found myself thinking about the gulf formation (I studied it at school) and that it has been made for us…
I thought about the fact that it gave a place where to love to thousands of people in history.

That it was just amazing.

I am not serene as I should be, I still feel I could have done more if I hadn’t felt so bad in the last months.
I don’t think I’ll get a good mark at the exam.

But I am sure I will be able to shot pictures at night (got to take pictures during a”social dinner” of a maths teacher congress)
and that my Mt Etna and my Gulf will be still there (well, hopefully or I would die…) even  in the next days.
I promised to both of them to take a good pictures of them as soon as I can. I really need nicer pictures of them, the beauty I saw today isn’t in the pictures I am showing here

Little Sparrow…

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” .

Catania and HDR

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