The bending sunflower

Today I worked on 2 pictures, one was an “HDR” work (well, not properly and HDR , but probably close enough…):

(well, not properly and HDR , but probably close enough…)

This picture has been taken on July 10th 2009, as the following 3 pictures, that I edited on July 13th.

And this:

The second one I edited today.
It reminded me that in the following days it fully bloomed and… I just ignored it because I just become unable to take any other pictures.. seems like this last sunflower knew its destiny and started opening in a way that it already can seem dead or, just bending in front of something it cannot control…

And, except for a picture, I don’t take so “colorful” and “detailed” pictures since that day. It’s weird, so weird!

I can't easily

blow a dream off…

but everything and everyone seem telling me I should.

Mt Etna gallery

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 too personal blog, 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!

How to waste your time

I'm pretty good in wasting my time.

And new programs for drawing on my tablet pc can help me in wasting my time, as pdf editor program help me with studying...

Yesterday:

Today after lunch, leaving it incomplete in order to go to study:

At 8pm, got unhappy for a little reason and colored one of the incomplete fingers:

I've never studied art, never seriously did a draw or a paint... tried some times, but always failed.

I should be studying (and a lot) physics but I always end on doing something like this.

I've never been able to drawn a part of human body, yesterday I was close to be... It's not a great piece of art, ok, but again, I've never studied art or being able to do such a thing... why can I do these sketches now? Why cannot I just "be good at physics"? Why this skill, if it's a real skill, didn't came up when I was 14 and still in time to go to seriously study art?

God has his plans, I'm sure of this. I'd just like to know which are...

Extremes

An hour before leaving Catania. Monday 24th August 2009….

Totally random shot, I was not looking into the viewfinder…

Few minutes before leaving Bologna to come back to Catania. Friday 28th August 2009.

Picture “wished” about 10 minutes realizing that I could really take it…

No more words, sorry. The more the time passes the more pictures are enough for me.

I don’t know if it’s good….

Meeting Rimini 2009: People

The convention I've been talking about in the last posts is really interesting, but really tiring too.
Rimini Fiera is a wide place and there are many things to see... therefore you have to walk a lot!

As a consequence, starting from the hours following lunch time, you can find a lot of people trying to get some rest.

Someone walks in the fresh water in order to cool down their feet:

Someone reads:

Some others, at the CDO stand, preffer to lie down on the comfortable sit placed there... where you can see:

the really tired ones...

Some were laying down alone, someone close to a friend or a dear person, someone (as me) was using a laptop.

Someone looks like a modern version of a Mark Twain novel character

Or somewhere else, you can find group of friends relaxing together, but each of them relax in a personal way. Who plays with a water bottle and gravity force, who just talking with other friends:

Seemed that the younger was the relaxing person the more active was the rest:

as for this little girl that lied down for several minutes, but never stopped moving her arms and head. Her relax was a play that followed a thought that probably she won't remember, but that in that moment seemed a lot of fun.

Or a little boy playing with soap bubbles and and a little girl, probably his sister, running away from the bubbles:

Many children played with balloons of any kind, probably a gadget of some stands. I loved the fact that most of the time the balloon and the children clothe color fitted.

and, once the balloon color fit with the luggage color too:

All these children were able to play for several hours with those balloons, and never get tired of such a simple game. Just in spite of those that says that the new generation cannot have fun with simple games.

I loved to watch these little guys playing. The first time I went to a Meeting in Rimini I wasn't much older than them (9). Probably as most of the today volunteers.

And, at times, some of them moved back to their childhood and started to play with children, even with no more flying balloons:

These are some of the folks you can find there. Simple people, families with children of any age, I also saw a couple of pregnant woman and many people of any race.

Exhibitions, talks, important people, shows, stands and everything belonging to the program is essential, but there would be no Meeting in Rimini if there weren't thousands of people spending some days of their vacation there.

There is no meeting without people willing to even get extremely tired, both if they got there as volunteers or as simple visitors.

Meeting Rimini 2009: The Exhibitions

What did I do there?

A lot of things but essentially:

- visit exhibitions

- meeting friends

- getting some relax (=taking pictures) after hours of walk.

Let's talk about the first thing that comes up to my mind when I think about the Meeting in Rimini: the exhibitions.
I went to Rimini with the aim of listening to talks, visit the exhibitions and meeting friends, but after a few hours I understood that talks would have taken too much time to my visit and I would "waste" precious time to see those exhibitions that cannot be seen online as the talks.

Therefore, I tried to visit at least one exhibition a day, and after 4 days I have visited something like 6 or 8 shows about many different topics... running from art to philosophy and philosophers life, from science to Christians situation in Russia during the Sovietic Revolution of 1917, to not talk about the little shows about homeless people and City Angels, and other little shows. Loved them all, taken the pictures of the only one I visited twice: The exhibitions about Galilelo Galilei's discoveries.

I didn't took much more than this picture...

of which I love the way the 2 young guys look at armillary sphere (or spherical astrolabe) .

Or this, with showing my boyfriend's hands while he was "playing" with an example of zooming lens:

Picture taken just to show the little, but important, details you can find in these shows that are thought for people of any age. (Yes, the ring he's wearing is our promise ring)

And less important, but not less interesting details alike this one:

or this other one:

both set beside this guy:

Do you know who is he? Just guess! ;D

These last 3 shoots have been taken in a dark room where there was a video projected on the room ceiling. Yep! People working on the Rimini Meeting aren't normal ones, and I think that's one reason that makes amazing the Meeting... and, wait a moment, isn't rational to show up on the ceiling something talking about the discover of Jupiter satellites? ;D
These last 3 shots are pretty far from being "good shots", but they have been taken just because I love the way people working on the exhibitions care about "scenography" details...