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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.
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.
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.
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 
Today has been raining for about 30 minutes in the afternoon. I had the great unwise idea to go out on the balcony to play with water and light instead of staying at home, in a warm place, studying 
I do think it was worth!
Shutter speed: 4sec.
Tripod: my blanket and my bed… and myself holding the breath for a few seconds.
Result: I shouldn’t take picture at night.
Creepy, awful day today!
I have not almost taken the today picture just because my ability to trust mankind (and my cognitive skills about people) is at its an all-time low.
But then, I said to myself: “F**k! I won’t let darkness overcome everything”.
I probably let the dark thoughts influence the picture, the attempt of HDR with a soap bubble, but I don’t dislike the result and I love the fact that the lens i kinda clear.
Another cloudy
and rainy
week end.
I can’t complain.
The slightly steamed up car windows, covered by rain drops, became an interesting playground for lights.
It’s still raining outside.
Sometimes I feel that my lack in “artistic field” is something of terrible, especially when I think that I probably don’t have those skills you can gain and improve in art school.
I do my best to learn something by myself, but I don’t think I’m doing a great job… as a consequence when I take pictures I do my best to get something nice and/or interesting.
The “I miss something” feeling increase when I’ve to edit a picture, and think about the light… but again, I can’t do much so I just follow my instinct and search the best combination to my eyes.
In this constant search of Beauty, at times, happens that in the picture I find something “new” that looks “old”.
For example, this detail in the glass I use every day.
I’ve been looking at its light games many time in these last months and, today, after lunch, I’ve decided to take a picture of it because my attention was attracted to it . I can’t say what it was. I’ve just taken the picture as well as I could.
While I was editing the picture lights, to make it looking “nicer”, here appears the girl.
The girl with the pony tail who is running with wide-opened arms, as she has just seen someone she loves and hadn’t met for a very long time.
As soon as I understood what I was looking at, I felt like I’ve already noticed this detail but not in a conscious way, indeed, to be honest, I wasn’t able to see it when I was taking the picture.
No, there was no alcoholic drink in my glass and I don’t assume drugs, it’s just my imagination mixed with a little of “luck”.
____
Update. Daddy saw a girl doing an athletic active like “pole vault” or “high jump”. Like he saw the pony tail, the head, the arms and the chest oriented like I thought. While the lines under the “arm” on the right, should be the legs oriented toward the sky while the girl is falling down.
