May 12, 2013
One of the things I thought during my first walk through Manhattan streets was an old joke told in my family.
It’s not sure if the one who used to tell the joke was my grandpa (a lawyer but definitely not a boring one) or his father in law (my great grandpa, the only one from north Italy, who was a professional photographer)…
The joke was about a guy who was starring at the skyscrapers and when asked what he was doing, he answered he was waiting for the buildings to activate. Activate what?. The motion to scratch the sky.
Well…actually some skyscrapers seemed placed there to comfort itchy skies.
And of course I wondered if grandpa or great grandpa or both laughed out loud when I took this picture thinking about all this.
It was amusing to think of them even if no one of the two has ever seen a skyscraper in his life (for what I know)
April 29, 2013
Sometimes I steal some minutes of the day to take a look to mt.Etna, especially on Sundays
Yesterday Etna had the kindness to throw a cloud of “sand” during those few minutes I’ve been there taking picture of it.
We’ve the best volcano of the world
April 28, 2013
Life might not be exciting in Catania but if you go to a shopping center on a Saturday afternoon you might get the chance to see this too
April 27, 2013
Me: I need help to take a picture to the red roses
Bro gave no feedback
Dad: Have we red roses?
Mom: I’ll help you
We have been there for a little while, she held the roses oriented toward the sky (because the plant hangs outside the balcony gates) and I took some pictures.
April 16, 2013
that’s why I’m trying to focus on the Beauty of that day (Friday).
I hope it won’t be necessary but, in case the result is bad, I wanted to drop here a note to remind me to
focus on Beauty
April 13, 2013
Today, a couple of friends from USA have made me recalling one of the happiest moments in my life.
The afternoon of Sunday 23rd April 2006.
I was at my senior year in high school.
I spent a good part of that afternoon taking pictures to butterflies in the backyard of family country house.
I had bought (for my 18th birthday) my first DSLR (Olympus E300) 11 months earlier but I was a student with very few (no) friends and I rarely was able to find time to leave home to take pictures.
As a consequence that afternoon was one of those rare occasions during which I was able to play with my camera.
I still have a clear image (in my mind) of my uncle walking toward to where I was,
and I still remember my yell “stand back or butterflies will fly away”.
Butterfly don’t mind if you yell, but they fly away if you get too close too quickly.
I can’t remember if uncle came closer or just waited for me at home.
but I remember quite well how we enjoyed looking at the pictures I have taken.
I don’t know the reason, but he stopped at this picture.
He said “we should name it “Stella”…”.
I have no idea of why he said it. He wasn’t exactly the sweetest man on the earth.
It didn’t matter, I added the word Stella (Star) to that picture file name.
I knew, even if I didn’t know why, it was something I wanted to remember.
He would have died few months later and, trust me, I had no idea (on that day in April 2006) of what was going to happen in the following months.
That day, for a few hours
I have been sitting on dry rabbit excrement but I was happy.
Behind me: Catania and its gulf
In front of me: Mt. Etna
Family at my side
Butterflies one step away from me
one trusted me enough to rest for a while on my hand
a simple joy I have re-discovered only 7 years later in NYC
That was Home.
April 12, 2013
Today it has been active but there was a written test in the afternoon.
Well, we went to see sunset after the exam.
Let’s hope I didn’t fail, but one thing is sure, I’ve had a nice afternoon and Beauty was definitely not playing hide-and-seek
November 2, 2012
Born from magma
Carved by water
Wasted and admired by humans
*Forre=Gorge/gully
*Laviche=lava
October 12, 2012
During the “dead time” lapse running between the moment I dropped my physics paper and the moment I had to go to lunch, I have decided to create this new HDR picture taken at the Pozzillo Lake.
Again 5 pictures merged to get just one picture
I am happy because this is one of those lucky situation were there is no way I can be tempted to crop the image to the 2:3 printable format, or screensaver format…it is in its original 4:3 format.
I do love it.
October 5, 2012
Not that you have to look for making mistakes. It’s really a good idea to avoid them when possible, but… they can help in many ways
You can learn that it can be a bad idea trying to make an HDR from 5 pictures taken with no tripod in a windy place
You can learn that way more people then you think hate or dislike HDR
Or you can, thanks to a mistake, start considering that you can USE that bad idea properly to get a different result that otherwise, without that mistake, you wouldn’t be looking for.
You can also learn that what looks false is not necessarily false, it can be… well… too much real?
Ok, this last sentence makes no sense. Sorry.
Another way mistakes can be helpful: a mistake can allow you to post something on a day that you have too much to do and no great inspiration
I know, it’s not a duty to post something daily and it would be better if I don’t post at all
but, I can’t help I am enjoying keeping this blog alive for a few months more, even if it resembles more a collection of “solitary rambling speech”
Who knows, someone might smile for an extra second in his/her day thanks to this post…
And… well.. I have to say “sorry” to the world for the yesterday long post.
Lago (lake) di Pozzillo – 1st September 2012
October 2, 2012
The picture was taken on Sept 1st 2012… I have taken several pictures that day but I can’t no longer dedicate whole afternoons to those so I will post them not following a chronological order… I will also alternate these with other pictures taken meanwhile that would made no sense posted after weeks.
Actually I should say “the pictures were taken on…”
As you can see it’s an HDR picture, or at least, the result of the attempt to make an HDR picture.
In this situation I have taken 3 pictures at different light levels and then merged them “properly”
I love this picture enough to make a “cover” of it for because it reminds me of how easy is to alter the way we perceive reality
My parents, who were right there when i took these pictures, barely recognized the place… even if I didn’t change shapes or added or removed elements from the shot.
I have just chosen a point of view where the lake looked like a river.
No, it isn’t even the river that collects its water in the lake (in this case artificial too), it’s just a place on the lake coast where two branches of the land are close.
The colors are different from what you could see there because of the HDR and how I have managed the “tonemapping”.
I had already saw all this there, most of it at least. I knew what I could have make and therefore I have prepared my box of photons to play with at home by just choosing the point of view and the exposures
I don’t have super power, it’s not even a master shot… I just like to play with “imagination”.
As when I am at the sea, go in a place where water is deep enough and “thanks to” Archimede I try to move some steps underwater pretending I’m in another dimension with zero gravity.
It last only few seconds (of course) but it’s rather funny if you do it in a safe way
With my camera I do the same, i start from reality, from what I know of what it can be done and get something that just look different but it keeps speaking of reality.
It’s what I try to do when I don’t want to “just” show
