I spend a good part of my life trying to explain people why I do like taking pictures, recently I said to a friend that taking pictures at times is like being surrounded by a sweet strong hug, it warms up soul in a tender way.
In these days in Catania is happening something to remember this girl.
I wanted to go out to take pictures, but most of the activities happens at evening and at night, and if you don’t want to take pictures with flash and you are not a good photographer with cool camera there are pretty few chances to get a good picture… on the night of the 3rd Feb I realized that I could I have tried to go out to take pictures in the morning of Feb 4th with sunlight.
I did.
Oh, I’ve taken several pictures… but that the one I love more, the one I want to remember.
The human hand stretching out to reach that slice of Beauty, of Love, of Eternity… in this case in a form of a simple picture of a “wood” representing a young woman, a saint, who had been killed for her faith. And the priests, at least good ones, always being there, ready, with their humans hands, to help others to get together that reflection of Beauty.
That human hand stretching out doesn’t look so different from me taking pictures trying to find that Hug…
that’s probably the cause that make me desire to choose only this picture to remember, both, the “Saint Agata festivity” of year 2010 and my attempt to picture at least a little part of it, while “changing the town in better” for at least 3 days.
Soon or later I’ll create the gallery with all other pictures, and comment some of those, if happens.
The following picture has been taken in August 2006.
I publish it only today, because before I didn’t know how to “play with it” in order to get a result I’d like to publish.
Here you can see my brother, who is one of my 2 favorite male “model”.
Why? Beside the fact that he is good looking, he doesn’t mind if you take picture of him then publish them online, he lives close to where I live and…
he has the luck to result nice in a picture even without posing. [I hate, badly hate, to take picture of people in pose ]
Yeah I can assure you, he was not posing… he is just this way, crazy enough to tie his t-shirt on his head while cooking sausage for lunch and facing the sky, while waiting those few seconds that pass from a turn to another to get an uniform cooking
[Of the sausage on the bbq not of himself under the sun ]
What I’m going to write is not a comment about this picture. I don’t think it needs any comment, what it tells is simple and probably an international behavior.
I’m focusing my attention on the kind of picture: “pictures of people I don’t know”. As you can see from the gallery set, I don’t take many pictures of people I don’t know, for several reason that runs from the fact I don’t go out very often to the fact I don’t want to disturb anyone. I’ve been told several time to not worry about it, I actually still don’t know what to think about…
But, yesterday, while talking with a crazy man that I recently met online, I went into the “Ragusa” folder of my pictures folder and found the “original” of this picture (actually the original shots is missed as all the original pictures I’ve taken in that period of my life). While I was still talking with my crazy friend who was telling me, for the n-th time, “Go out, don’t stay home for such a long time” I started looking at that picture, I saw those old “enemy”, the reflections on the glass that was between me and that man, and thought: “What a pity, it might have been a nice shot, I wonder if there is a way to make those reflection disappear but…”. In that moment an idea came. My friend had to leave (don’t tell him that I didn’t listen to what he was saying during the last minutes of chat ) and I tried to follow the idea that came up on my mind. In few minutes, seriously, in a very short time, I got this shot.
Yeah, it’s a little blurry, it’s not perfect. You can still see a little reflection on the right, but “I did it”: I have been able to pull out that picture what I saw that day.
I wonder if I had been able to do such a thing 4 years ago now I would have been taking more pictures to people.
Well, actually I wonder if this man is still alive, I hope yes for him.
I would like to talk to you about something happened almost an year ago.
For Christmas 2008 me and my boyfriend bought 2 new cellphones. The day we started using them… till now, nothing strange… but, I think that day we were a funny show to see.
I turned my cellphone on and started surfing through the menu, and the various cellphone options and set what I wanted to set and started using the cellphone camera.
My boyfriend “studied” the user manual from the first to the last page and than started using the cellphone… of course he can use it better than I do, now.
That’s us.
I’m the crazy, messy, irrational girl. He’s the calm, rational and tidy boy.
He goes to sleep at 11pm, I tend to stay awake all the night… we substantially talk only in afternoon and early nights
Despite all these differences (there are many others that I didn’t list) I think we are an almost perfect match, the complementary of each other. With time we’ll see if I’m right.
I think this site is a good example/proof of this match
I’m the one that takes the pictures you can see here and cares about the graphics. He is the one that studies how to do site and create its structure. This is a kind of “house” we are building and “he builds it and take cares of house services” and “I take care of the interior design”. Without an house all furniture are useless, and house with no nice furniture is a cold useless and empty house
That’s the way we spend our spare time. Despite all those typical “couple activities” we spend a lot of time taking care of this site. I’ve an idea about a new layout? I talk with him and he tries to figure out how to turn that idea into a fact.
So, it’s all thanks him that now the site and blog has a new layout that is closer to my idea of the “ideal site”, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
There is still a lot to do, but I’m really glad of what happened till today.
This post wants to be a special thanks to that boy that stands my craziness, with whom I argue almost everyday but that fills my day and probably the only one who truly trust the chance that maybe, someday, my dream will come true. Surely he is the only one who is giving a concrete help.
Let’s do a little outing.
I use internet since I was 10, and I chat since I was 11, therefore I’ve always been a little reluctant in showing people how I look like.
At first “hiding” was a form of protection, later it was shyness and a tendency to think: “Who wants to talk to me shouldn’t need to see how I look like, they must like my soul not my face”.
Later I understood it’s in human nature, even in best people’s one, to tend to will to “see the face” of people they are talking with… it probably gives that note of realism that helps trust.
So now, after almost 11 years I’ve been asked for the first time: “Can you send a picture of you?” I think is not such a bad thing showing my face… hoping you won’t get too scared!
It’s sure, I still “hide” a little and still “hate” who cannot wait to see a shot or who selects people by their faces only.
But, I wanted to give a little of realism and “human” aspect to this site.
So…Here I am! With my “little girl” in a picture taken yesterday evening in my room.
Yep. It’s true. Someone can say: “Who assure us that there’s really you there?”
Nobody. I can still be a fat, ugly and terrible man that pretends to be a girl that studies physics and loves photography.
But I’m pretty sure I’m a girl who hopes to be not that fat, ugly or terrible
Cleaning up my pictures is even more difficult than cleaning up my room… the big problem is that as soon as I start cleaning up I find pictures that “look unusually interesting”.
Indeed I find pictures that at a first sight considered “not good”, while when I clean up I decide “to play” with them and got it…
Just for example
This is my brother, using his cellphone while lying on the floor of our country house. It was the 9th April 2007.
I took 2 years and 7 months to understand this picture.
Who knows if I’m wrong now or I was wrong in April 2007.
I love colors and till a few years ago I’ve usually considered kinda ridiculous to take pictures in Black and White… unless there is a specific will, for example:
-”I want to make the picture look old”
- “I want to play with editing photos program”
- “I want to see how it looks like”, etc…
I found pretty annoying people that say “B&W is MORE artistic…”. Every time some told me such a thing I had to “bite my toungue” to not start asking: “What do you mean by “more artistic”? Why don’t you just say “I like B&W more”?”
I don’t have many B&W pictures… except those one that are”low key shots” (or kinda) like this:
or because, for some reason that I don’t know a picture seemed telling me:
“I might look nice in B&W, try”.
Thanks Lord taking pictures is not something that follows a 100% logical path, it’s a lot based on instinct (or feelings if you wanna be a little more “romantic”).
I NEVER take shots directly in B&W, even when I think that I’ll turn that picture in a B&W one. Why? 2 simple reason.
1) A man I trust a lot (as a photographer) once told me that it works better if you take your pictures in raw and color mode. So the first cause is that I’m able to “trust”.
2) I’m a dreamer (or unsure) kind of person: I always think that later I might enjoy that shot more in color than in B&W, so “Why should I cut a chance of a better beauty in my life?”
Here I’m just telling my “way to be” with no intention of teaching something… How could I?
I’m the “living abortion” of a physicist and an i-photographer (imaginary photographer) who knows pretty few about post production and quite nothing about photography history… therefore my words worth quite nothing in both worlds, but I do think that I might share “Beauty I see”, therefore I’ll keep on taking this blog. At least it helps me to not get crazy and start hating life
“Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality’s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one’s own lifeis joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.
Believers find nothing strange in this: they know that they have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God. Is it in any way surprising that this leaves the spirit overwhelmed as it were, so that it can only stammer in reply?”
Pope John Paul II
I’m not an artist, but there words are so true for me…
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