Keep on testing

Again from 7th January tests.

Experiments

“Experiment” is a word that is often said by people around me.
I have grown up in a scientific environment
I had decided to study science
I am probably going to live the rest of my life in a scientific environment, indeed, the lack of money given to university in Sicily is going to change my life in 2 days.
This word is such a big part of my life that I often use it to describe what I do with photography… no, no, I don’t say “experiment” to sound like a smart-scientific-artist… it’s what I actually do since I have not the patience and probably the humility to open books or follow photography courses…
ok…
to be 100% precise I have to say that at first I looked at others’ works a lot (I still take inspiration by them),
that with time you get experience (a lot to do yet)
and the both last things help a lot to know what can you do with the camera and, therefore, to know toward which direction you can move with your experiments (like for a scientist that has to know how his instrument works).
But that’s what I essentially do: take the camera and see what I get and in some days i focus on specific “experiments”.
This is the long exposure time.
This is the first shot I am sharing that I took with a double polarize (tomorrow is the second).
This is the first shot on which I have started to work on, but that I decide to leave at the point I left it before dinner. It’s an incomplete work that tells to where stuck the conversation between me and the webmaster about this “new” method of taking pictures.
I don’t think I’m the first doing what I am doing, but i am sure that I have never read (so far) of people doing what I am doing and that I had this idea while talking with my webmaster in front of the sea in the late morning of October 31st.
Today I was still talking with him in front of this picture, while I was working on this picture… then we left for dinner… and I know that we won’t talk this close for a longer time from now.
I wanted to freeze things as they are.
I have other pictures to work on… and I will take more. For today, for another whole day spent with him I want to remember this.
Our chat in front of my works, or while I was taking picture that are just a mere mixture of topics.

Lightning from home

Today at about 19 I have gone on the balcony because I had seen several lightnings on the sky and I wanted to catch some lightning shots.
For the first 30minutes all pictures turned black and while disappointed for the nth failure I got capture by lights games on the streets and water…

I got back inside home… I was getting ready to check my pictures when I have noticed that there were more lightning and got out on the balcony again.

Ok… that’s how the sky looked like at the end of each lightning… at almost 3 hours after sunset…

hmm…

huh!

I guess you got the idea.

Not the best lightning shots, I didn’t mean to catch such a shot and I don’t even know how I could, but… gee… I’ve been waiting for so long to get the chance to get this shots!.
Today the situation was pretty unusual indeed, a lot of lightnings with almost no rain!

Oh, the funniest thing?
Mom telling dad and bro: When there is such a weather I’d love to hide, and what does she do instead? SHE GOES OUTSIDE TO TAKE PICTURES!
All my family members today looked at me with the typical smile that says “you are cute crazy”

Just a little, it was not dangerous

Refuge, comfort

I think, hope, that everyone has at least a place to call refuge, a place where you can feel well.

There are several places around me that I call refuge, some are not made of matter, some are too far away to be visited everyday, at times it’s just my bed and then, and then there is this place

It is a place in the area where part of Catania university had been built.
It’s a place where you can find a passerby but, there, rarely you can find someone just sitting and looking around.

This is one of the few places in the “cittadella” where I find peace. I have to walk for about 10-15minutes to reach it from the physics department, but it’s all worth doing that walk.

Yesterday I went there. In the moment I started my walk  the sky was partially cloudy, when I arrived there it was raining, a light rain. As soon as I pulled my camera out of my bag the sun started coming back. I have taken a few pictures. While I was  on my way back to the laboratories most of the clouds were gone and the few still up in the sky were playing with sun light giving to the sea (pretty well visible from the “cittadella”) the strangest colors, it was all a mixtures of shades of blue, green and gray. Part of the clouds left were hiding the upper part of Mt Etna but a good half of the volcano was still visible and its amazing dress of snow was one of the most amazing part of that show.

People all around me were doing what people do here. Some were reviewing for a test, some were going to the administration, some other were running around the sport ground , some were just chatting with friends, a couple was kissing, some were working, some were relaxing, someone was going away, someone was arriving.

I didn’t get the shot I wanted, but on my way back to the laboratories I realized why I felt “the need” to run away from “my desk” and have this walk.

It was all so peaceful and beautiful that all my troubles faded away.

The webmaster and the meter

A creative use of basic physics instruments… I think that the serious physicist (and webmaster of this blog) has spent too much time with the crazy girl that takes the pictures published in this blog.

This is another of those shots that I consider “crap” and after a few months, surfing through old pictures, I get an “idea” about what I can do with this picture.
Probably it’s still not a good shot, but it “has something”.

About 450Gb

The total ammount of images on my 2Tb external HD, a lot are pictures I’ve taken starting in
Easter 2002 with an Olympus C-1 zoom,
then an Olympus E-300 starting on May 2005
and now using an Olympus E-30 (since March 2010).

Time flies, my life runs with it, taking these pictures are probably one of the best thing I’ve ever done,
I don’t know if it’s good or not, or if it’s what I’m supposed to do…
but they are there and what is sure is that these picture are my attempts to get closer  (or get back?) to Beauty.

What am I supposed to do if…

I get angry and I can’t throw punches (with the wii) or prepare cookies, but I want to relax because I am too nervous to focus on my studies?

(Or, just if I’m lazy ;D)

Create a personal version of an old “joke” known among physicists, or people crazy enough to know a bit what Quantum Physicists can (virtually) do to a poor little kitty!

Some people might say that the nobel prize isn’t such a great reward nowadays, but that’s not the point of this image!

Yep, the picture is an old shot of “Java the cat” (whose name tell a lot about what kind of people I know) and she’s inside a drawer. [No violence made on the kitty to take this shot]

Chatting about HDR

One of my best friend, a guy from Texas, recently bought a dslr. This made us having long chat about photography (cool!)

Yesterday we talked about HDR and we end up with screen-sharing to see “action” to do for editing a picture.

During a test I was doing with a couple of random picture, that I had taken an year ago and considered “crappy”, I got this result:

Not an HDR at all, but I see something of intriguing in it.

At least, I think so.

The Night

I’ve taken this picture in August 2008.

It recalls me of a Péguy’s book I bought recently. It makes me thinking especially of a part of the “Il portico del mistero della seconda virtù” (Italian title of that book) where he speaks about night… it’s a very long part (several pages),

Today I want to share the following lines I read while in a medical centre waiting room [gone there just for a blood test, nothing serious].

[…]

E io vi dico Rimandate a domani

Quelle preoccupazioni e quelle pene che oggi vi rodono

E oggi potrebbero divorarvi.

Rimandate a domani quei singhiozzi che vi soffocano

Quando vedete l’infelicità di oggi.

Qui singhiozzi che vi salgono e vi strangolano

Rimandate a domani quelle lacrime che vi riempiono gli occhi e la testa

Che v’inondano. Che vi cadono. Quelle lacrime che vi colano.

Perché da qui a domani, io , Dio, sarò forse passato.

[…]

La notte è luogo, la notte è l’essere in cui si riposa, in cui si ritira, in cui si raccoglie.

In cui rientra. E ne esce fresco. La notte è la mia più bella creazione.

I regret I don’t have the English version of this book (if there’s any). If/When I find it I’ll write the English lines instead of the Italians ones.

University

The part of the post before the picture is just a short story of my “relationship” with a couple of the Catania university departments. The actual story of the picture is written below it.

I didn’t go nuts, the first part of the post can be a way to learn a bit more about “reasons” that made me take that pictures.

I’m not good with words, especially in English. Sorry.

I study at the University of Catania but I know some of its departments since I was a little girl. That’s because my mother is an university professor.

For the first 19 years of my life I’ve considered that place an something closer to playground than a place where you were supposed to work or study.

In that place I’ve taken some of my first pictures and video.

Actually the video is probably just one, recorded in late October 2002, during one of the first of “those” days that Mt Etna had been really active.

Those days the city was almost totally blocked by Mt. Etna “sand”, thus even schools had been closed for a few days.

Yeah. In other cities schools close due to snow, here in Catania due to “sabbia vulcanica”.

Since schools were closed I had not to study a lot, thus I didn’t resist going with mom to “the big playground” in order to record that big event with my camera and daddy’s camcorder.

(Soon or later I’ll publish the pictures).

There are places in that big “playground” that can get so dark to appear pretty dangerous after sunset.

Some of those places are the “corridors” in the the teachers’ studios area, that is usually kinda empty in late afternoon (7.00 pm or so).

That day of 8 years ago, when I’ve decided to go back to mom’s studio because sun was almost down and it wasn’t safe to stay outside the department, I decided to take a kind of video in the “insides”.

The idea came because everything was first lit by a strange light at sunset (effect of the Mt. Etna sand suspended in sky) and after sunset everything was kinda dark.

The video is only few seconds long, it wanted to represent the quick steps made by a girl who was running in dark to get safe behind those studios. I also enjoyed the camera effect of “night vision” to show my hands looking for (seriously doing that because I couldn’t see well) the right key to open the studio.

A silly video, something I’d never show to someone!

Despite this  I enjoy recalling of it because it is one of the closest “representation” of the sense of desolation and solitude that those empty corridors arise in me.

The same feelings that now are always present in my heart even when those places are well lit and full of students and teachers because, in less than 6 months, the playground turned into “the place that reminds me of my biggest mistakes”.

Into the place of what “it could have been but will never be”.

Yeah. University make me thinking very happy things…

It will pass. Time washes away everything, except Eternity.

The picture you can see here was taken in a late afternoon in summer 2005, but the place is the same.<

My father unconsciously helped me to get a picture of those corridors.

I had find a way to edit this picture only today. This editing, that is just a playing with lights, makes the corridor looking shorter and less spooky, but I love the way my daddy’s silhouette looks like in there.

It is undefined, reflected on the floor in a way that is even more undefined…. it looks like kinda the same way I feel there: an undefined shadow out of its place.

New desktop

Probably not among the best pictures I’ve ever taken but that’s what I’ve chosen for my iMac desktop

and that’s what is shown as tablet pc desktop

The thoughts that comes at looking at these pictures are a lot, but I don’t feel like sharing them in written form.

You can catch them from the pictures, and if you cannot catch them, you can always find your own thoughts.

Have a nice everything