In this moment

that’s what me or people on my left are probably looking at, just from an higher point of view.

It’s such a great show!

Time and editing

Picture taken on may 28th.
Sometimes a bit of patience and editing can help to show what you saw, in an unconscious way, when you had decided to take a picture.

After Mass

In the last weeks I’ve been looking for a nice backpack where I can carry my cameras.

Often people tell me that I’m crazy because I live in Catania and it’s always dangerous to go in town with cameras.

They are right but I’d miss all those pictures that show up when I’m walking lost in thought.

Catania at dusk

Today I’ve gone out with the webmaster to look for a book, but the book shop closed an hour earlier today. Sigh!

We  have decided to have a walk and I’ve taken this picture on our way back home.

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!