You are currently browsing the Panoramas category.
I feel a little gloomy
although today I had the luck to spend a few hours trying to find something popping up from darkness
and although I still have the luck to dream and hope I’ll be able to leave a mark, even a thin one, on this world that will be “enlighten” by The Eternal Light.
Despite all, I already decided a life course,
that appears to be the opposite of the one that should be, but, this it the only possible good one at the moment…
therefore I’ve to complete my work, to complete what I’ve started 3 years ago (and I’m already late).
Completing this work might mean to never change direction, but surely it means, now, to drop the camera for a while… to keep it always beside me and ready to sh3oot, because I do need it to “breath” and go ahead… but being ready only for taking pictures if “something comes” and stop looking for that “something” for a little while…
Tonight I probably saw the end of the last day of “freedom to look for”, that’s why I feel a little gloomy but, only a little.
Today sunset said me “Stop playing with the camera and go back to your real work”, but it told me in a kind and comfortable way.
As that little star wanted to tell “it’s not ALL over when sun goes down”…
I know, this happen at every sunset, but that’s the one I’ve been watching to for 1 hour and half peeking out from a narrow window of the small attic of my brother’s house.
Once again I was being stuck by narrow spaces but, today, I was feeling free because I had the freedom to look around, to see sky around me.
Posted January 3rd, 2010. 2 comments
Among the pictures I’ve taken this morning:
Among the pictures taken in the afternoon:
Passed the test – Slept – Talked with friends and family – Spent the whole night awake talking with friends – Slept – Had a long long shower -Had dinner
Started to clean up pictures. There’s such a big mess… a lot to do, but I’ve a 2 days of relax left, I think I can do it… Actually I THOUGHT!
After 5 minutes I found some Mt Etna eruption “test” pictures.
I had almost forgot that I did it. I had to check the date on the file details (thanks Lord I keep my camera knowing what’s the day and the time).
Gee! It was April 2007. Seems so long ago!
I always wished to be able to take a good shot of Mt Etna during one of its eruption, but I’ve never had the occasion to find a group of people climbing up there, close enough to take great shots. Parents says it’s dangerous, friends get bored by the idea, some friends of friends goes to “observing places” that are not closer than my country house… I’m still waiting for the chance to go there during an eruption.
At that time I was 19. I was still a “fighter” and I didn’t give up with the idea of “trying” to take picture of Mt Etna eruption… the show was too amazing to just look at that.
But… I HADN’T A TRIPOD! Probably I bought it AFTER these shots.
BTW, I went in the house and took a ladder that become my new tripod.
The ladder wasn’t exactly stable, I started using books or any kind of “weight” to make it stable. I also asked parents to avoid to walk close to “my area”…
That’s the way I took 10 shots about in order to get a decent picture of Mt Etna during eruption, even if it was too far to get such a shot. That’s probably why I’ve never published these pictures… now I think is kinda funny-sweet seeing them, and don’t seem that bad.
Even if, I still hope that the next “eruption time” I’ll be able to get as close as possible to it. (I’m not brave, there is no danger if you go there with wise people and guide)
Posted October 30th, 2009. 4 comments
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!
Posted September 25th, 2009. 7 comments
I went to see shooting stars and trying to catch a picture of one of them. I took no shooting star picture, but I had the pleasure to see the show given by the more “static” stars…and appreciate the difference of color and length path of each of them:
It was cold, cooler than I thought because it had rained the previous afternoon and the moon rose, making the “seeing” less good, but there was something of really good to enjoy:
the just risen, amazing, moon!
We went to sleep (at about 3.30 am) saying to each other: “We’ll wake at 5am and see how the sky looks like”… we woke up at 7am, and just because the sun had just “risen” from the nearby little wood! ;D
We surely couldn’t go back of 2 hours, but we went out to check if there was some amazing … nothing.
But, we’ve notice a little bashful “young lady”, that showed itself just the time of a couple of pictures and then flown away… as it just wanted to wish a “Good Morning”…
or just didn’t want to distract me from another amazing show, that I wish I could see from my window in Catania, but that I can just see at my country house…
… and this show allowed me to take the best picture of the day, and I even hadn’t thought that I was going to take a picture of Mt. Etna
It’s so weird that, if we talk about picture, I have no problem if something goes in a way I didn’t plan, and to be able to appreciate the unexpected.
With the passing of time, looks like that this “maybe-gift” and “sure-distraction” of taking pictures is, somehow, the way that Someone is using to tell me:
<<Whoever has “eyes” to see ought to see!>>
Posted August 16th, 2009. 2 comments
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
… and I thought about you!”
No, no, it’s not a typical sentence that my boyfriend tells me. It happens, but he is not the only one.
The more the time passes the more happens that someone (realtive, friends, classmate) comes close to me (or send an email) to tell me: “Hey… I have been thinking about when I saw an amazing show (sunset, a flower field, and so on), I wished I could take a good picture of what I was looking at… that’s how you came up to my mind”.
I know, I am not the best photographer in the world. Sure I am not!
The thing that mainly please me isn’t the fact that people think about me about “someone able to take a good picture”. I know that most of them with the proper camera would be able to take a great picture.
What really please me is the fact that people think about me when they see something of a such wonderful beauty that they wish to “save forever”.
That’s one of the main thing I want to do in my life: “helping” people to focus on that Beauty that can fill us completely… I try to do it by helping them focusing on it with pictures or by making them willing to focus more on it, to save it to preserve its memory.
And today happened again, a classmate of mine told me that yesterday she saw Mt Etna during sunset time, and that it was so wonderful that she thought she could take a nice picture, and she thought about me.
Few hours later I told her:”pick up a picture of mine, the one you like more…”. She chosen me this one:
Wow… looks like she loves sunsets! So do I ;D
She commented the picture too. I am trying to translate what she told me:
It’s amazing, looks like you have been able to cath nature power, unsteadiness and nostalgia.
It’s scaring but at the same time it’s attractive and you would like to lose yourself there forever.
And, at the same time, the picture doesn’t look like a picture at all!
It rather looks like a painting,
and it’s difficult to understand if it’s water, air or fire
there are the elements!
Wonderful!
She asked to be paid for the comment too! (she was kidding of course ;D)
I loved the comment, somehow she told most of the thing that made me take this picture.
I was being in one of my favorite place in my country house, I looked on the right and saw this show. I started yelling out:”Look up! Look up!”
My relatives all around there stopped looking at it, amazed.
It was 28th August 2005.
3 months after I got my camera, I was still trying to understand how to use it…but somehow, I had the “luck” to take this shot.
Well… actually…I have never tried to take pictures that look like paintings (part of me thinks that it isn’t good that a picture looks like a painting) but as Giulia, another classmate of mine (Elisa) and her sister liked the picture because it looked like a painting… and I have to admit that I like this picture also because it looks like a painting.
But I do love more that people enjoy it.
Sorry for the long post, but I thought it was worth 
A lot of time seems like there is no way to go ahead, no way to keep on fighting.
And especially seems like there is no way to keep on “hoping” and “dreaming”, and seems like you can just keep on thinking: “I wish I were somewhere else, I wish I were someone else”.
Yeah, Yeah. Quite annoying, upsetting and kind of “frustrating”.
What can I do?
Close my eyes, start thinking about something pleasant? When and where I felt well, why did I felt so?
Yeah, cool! Many times it works… or, if I am not able to do this with just my mind, I turn on the computer as soon as I can and start jumping all around my pictures…
Today I stopped on this:
There has been no way to stop smiling and thanking.
Yeah, yeah. I am supposed to tell you something about this picture, about what was happening when I was taking it… but, the truth is that I can remember only that I was pleased and glad and “feeling free”. Nothing important for this world but exactly what I was seeking for today!
At the moment I can just say that I had the chance, quite unplanned, to take this shot… Unplanned because when I took this picture I couldn’t see so many seagulls… but they were, amazingly, there. I just had to way to see there.
Now, seems like I just have to wait, to wait to see what is amazing in this life because I know there is something of amazing, because I have seen its sign before.
Or I can start telling me lies as: “it’s not important if you can like what you do, most of this life is just awful and you just have to keep on going ahead”…
I don’t like lies. Do you?
Posted April 23rd, 2009. 4 comments
The site, as I said it’s still under construction, but my (official) main activity is to study physics so I have very little free time.
Yesterday I uploaded a new gallery: Pantalica.
Take a look if you wish.
What about these pictures?
We could start knowing something about the place.
The pictures I am showing up, have been taken in May 2006. At that time I was 18, I knew about the place but I have never been there even if it’s Sicily.
Before that day I thought it was impossible to see such an amazing place with so much water in Sicily! I remember I spent most of my time taking pictures and saying: “Wow that’s wonderful!”. That day I had the quickest lunch I ever had because I wanted to keep on taking pictures.
As you can see: I have a wonderful memory of that place!
Since May 2006 I have always planned to come back there, but each time there has been a problem or a more important thing to do that I had to give up; I hope this summer i will be able to go there ;D
Ok… I don’t want to drown pictures with too many words. In future I hope to have the chance to talk about each of them (more or less), because I like to remember (and share) each aspect of the Beauty that made me take each shot.
Gotta go,
I hope you will enjoy Pantalica as much as I did!
Posted April 17th, 2009. 1 comment
This is official my first post on this “new” blog that is related to my new website: photonmessage.com.
There is still a lot of mess, intro to complete, galleries to complete… but I have been able, with the help of my boyfriend (what will we do without people who loves us?), to create the general structure of my new website.
I could bother you trying to tell you about all the other sites I’ve created. I think I created my first website when I was 12. It was of course a simple stupid site about me… now, the new site, it’s a site about my pictures, or better, about those pictures I think are good enough to be shown.
What do I want from this site?
A lot of things, but essentially I still want what I have always want when I show my pictures: I want to show up to this world that there is Beauty out there, and that is a wonderful present for us…
Why am I a beauty-seeker? Because I need it as every human needs air, I need it to live (that is different to “just survive), I need it to appreciate life even if sometimes it’s too hard and difficult.
Do I think my pictures are the best all over the world?
No, not at all… It is clear I still have a lot to do, a lot to learn and a lot to decide.
The only thing I know is that at the moment I want to go ahead because I know to be Loved by that one Who created everything, me and you included.
I wish you will enjoy my pictures “fellowship”, as well as I enjoy them.
I wish you will see the Beauty and Love that I have seen “reflected” on the subjects of my shot…
So… let’s start with this little adventure that will bring me to I don’t know where, but that it must be somewhere… like when I shot this picture less than 48hrs ago. I turned back, saw something that was somehow interesting and I tried to capture it. My boyfriend said:”You see thing that I cannot, I didn’t notice this frame of this place”. It’s probably a too simple picture, but it meant something…
Fortunately not all the picture are such a mistery for me. You’ll see it.
A special thanks to my friends that wrote (or are writing) the “about her” (About the author) lines. I didn’t wrote the name of most of them yet, because I didn’t know if they want to appear on this site.
Posted April 16th, 2009. 3 comments
