Reflected Love

Me: "Close your eyes, think about a picture of mine and tell me which is".
M1L: "The one with the rose that seems lit from inside"

Me: "Why?"
M1L: "I love the strange light there".

This is a part of a conversation about pictures I had with my boyfriend, few minutes before he left to go to sleep.
I wanted a picture to dedicate to him for a post. Tomorrow he will have the spoken part of a test to start the PhD in Nuclear Physics, that he, hopefully, will get in 3 or 4 years.

I am glad he chosen this picture. I like the light effect too and today I like it more because it made me realize that Beauty in things is like a light, that seems to be coming from inside but instead it is just a reflected light.
For this reason, probably, even such a "common" thing alike a little rose I have seen growing up year by year, can became something of amazing... something that I will probably we'll ever get bored to look at.
I think that by instinct everyone of us look for this "reflected Eternal Beauty"... we have just to look at things and let this Beauty feels our hearts.

Thinking about this picture another idea came up to my mind... an idea that probably "solved" a "problem" I have been thinking about for years: "What makes so special the person we love and we see everyday. Why are we so amazed in seeing their friendly faces that we already know very well? Why don't we get ever bored by them?"
I think that such an amazing love or friendship came when both side open their heart and let that Beauty, that Eternal Love, fill their souls... so everyone we love is a source of "that reflected Love", and we can be such a source for them as well... and, by the nature of that Beauty, we will never get bored even of the people we know through and through.

My dear, it is one of the most important reason that make me look forward to see you again, to hug you again.
And I hope we will be able to celebrate a good result in the spoken test your going to have in few hours.

You are doing a great work for both of us.

Please, pray for us too!

The sun shines less, it's getting cold outside, but...

It’s probably me unable to do it, but I don’t use to take pictures in this period of the year because it’s often cloudy (so no good lights) and it’s wind.

The period I prefer is spring-summer when the sun often shines and this allow me to take colorful pictures alike this one:

I took this picture the 15th April 2008, that day it was warm outside and the and the shining sun helped me a lot taking this picture.
The flower in the picture is a Passiflora (Passion flower), it’s among my favorite ones.

By the way, when I bought this plant (in March) the information I read about this said that it used to bloom only in a period of the year alike “late spring” or “summer” according to the plant… if it works really this way my plant isn’t well informed! It has been blooming from April with almost no rest. ;)

Yep, Thursday had been a great day, full of new events: joining SOL group and finding a lot of wonderful people, my boyfriend did an important test and I had also the chance to see such an unusual but amazing event that made my day looking nicer, a lot nicer.

So… even if I was tired, I was in a hurry and outside it was windy and cloudy I wanted to try try to take a picture to the brave (or reckless?) flower that bloomed on Wednesday (I think) and was going to close… fortunately mom showed me in time!

This isn’t surely alike the picture I took on April, colors aren’t vivid, I couldn’t play with camera settings to get the black background (this was due to the flower position too) but I think that, despite all, I am satisfied by this picture.
I think it’s AMAZING that a flower blooms in the period when the whole nature is going to sleep for some months, don’t you?
I hope that this won’t kill the plant, though! Outside it is getting colder!

Well… that day someone probably didn’t enjoy my presence on the balcony:

Here you are who was observing me, standing on the gate of the balcony of the apartment that is above mine, I guess they were waiting me to go in order reach the little dish where we leave some food for them.

As soon as I noticed them I wondered if they were thinking something such as: “This one has to annoy just at lunch time?”

Overcoming (little) pain

Problems, pains and a lot of things can make life so awful that it seems almost no worth to live... but we have to go ahead and with time we learn that we have to deal with this negative aspects and most of the times we cannot overcome problems without the proper support.
This support can come from friends or relatives or "something else" that everyone reaches walking along his/her own way... one of these ways, in my case, is photography.

Taking pictures, in my case, is not only a way to appreciate that world beauty I wouldn't notice otherwise, it's also trough this "hobby" I can find a way to stand little problems alike pain, that famous "leg pain" that bothers me since I was 15 years old. It isn't a big deal but it can be really annoying because sometimes I am slowed down by pain and it makes me complain a lot (Well... I am also really good at complain).

How can taking picture be a way to accept pain?
JUST... I have noticed that if I have to suffer "leg pain" started with no reasons seems like the biggest problem in my life, whereas, it is much easier to overcome if I decide to try to ignore it in order to take a picture! (Not always, but most of the time it works this way).
In the same way, I usually don't complain if I start feeling pain because I had to adopt weird stances to shot pictures. I behave this way not because I have a "bad conscience" (I usually mock myself to have been clumsy) but because I have learn that this a little price I have to pay to have had the chance to "pin" in a picture a small but amazing part of that Eternal Beauty that created everything that surround us.

Looks like that passion for photography and the conscience that trough it I can appreciate at least part of that Beauty, can work as a perfect painkiller! ;)

To take pictures I squatted down in front of this dragonfly for several minutes, my legs didn't enjoy it, but I guess it was worth.

No words

I don't know what to say, but these words might be the proper ones.

Half a second

Even half a sec can be a really long time for a lot of reasons, not necessarily for bad reasons. This time lapse can seem too long if you have to "take a picture"...

Suppose you must stay, in an uncomfortable position for *only* 0.5 second and you must be "steady" if you don't want a blurred picture.
Suppose that the place where you want to be steady is a rock, and that your shoes are slippery.
Now suppose your crazy enough to be leaning over what is below the rock you are on, because what you want to be the subject of your picture is down there!

I can assure you, even half of a second in this situation is long enough to be an obstacle for your intentions!

I don't know if it was love for taking pictures, if it was the tendency to always try to surpass yourself or the typical teenager craziness but I didn't give up in that "dangerous" situation.

The rock and my shoes were slippery, my classmate wanted to go away but I felt I had to lean over that little water fall and to try the "just discovered" new technique with that subject!
I looked around me and tried to find a position that allowed me to take that picture but saved me from falling off the rock.

A tree branch above me was exactly what I was looking for, indeed it, as an arm of a giant, allowed me to stay enough steady and partially suspended over that little waterfall and this is how I had the chance to shot this picture!

This picture probably will never win a first prize in an international photography contest but to take it I won my fear, I improved my photographic skills and I came back home really happy that day!.

Well, taking picture in the oddest positions has it's cost:pain.

But, believe me, this kind of pain is never annoying for me!

I will talk about it tomorrow.

Not in the mood, sorry.

[...]
"Never fool myself that my dreams will come true
being use to trouble I anticipate it
but all the same I hate it, wouldn't you?"
[...]

The last 2 lines are perfect to describe my status today, the first one might be perfect to describe my status in a month or so... once again.

Hope I am wrong.

I wanted to write a post about a picture I shot in May 2006, but I am not in the mood today.

Sorry.

Nostalgia is... missing the chance to take pictures.

In these days I have been sick, so I didn't go out, I missed almost a week of lectures and I didn't go to the Mass too. I did nothing of what I usually do.
Despite this "bad" situation, something nice happened: I had the chance to talk more with my friends, and to discover new-old ones and this made me turn back into a positive mood.

This positive mood makes me willing again to do thing alike going out to take pictures!
Alas! In the next months I have to study a lot so I won't be going out for a very long while and this makes me feeling a big sweet nostalgia for shooting.... but I am happy!
Why happy? It's a long story, just know that for a while I did want to do NOTHING, absolutely nothing, and I reached the pretty annoying (or worrying for friend) point that I didn't want to care about my passions too...

Everything is fine now, so... I am going to show you one my last work... hum, these words make the picture seeming an important one and it isn't... but I cannot think of other ways to express the concept that "this the last picture I shot".

I took this picture at my country house on 19th October 2008. It was a really cloudy day so light wasn't the best one and everything looked monochromatic, all the same... but I knew it must have been something of interesting so I forced my eyes to find something that was nice, and after few minutes I found this grapes.
I took some pictures at the standing grapes, later my mother asked me if she could picked the and I said to her smiling: "Only if you allow me taking the pictures to you while you are picking them!"... she agreed of course and here your are the result!

Yeah, those are my mother's hands, aren't them amazing too?! :)

Later I have been able to fin a couple of interesting things... I may post these pictures in the next days.

Today I just wanted to show you one of the reasons that make me love (and miss) "photography" so much: the fact that this is a way to force yourself to "look for beauty" and "to not just stop at a the first impression of the reality you have".

Wouldn't you miss such a joy too?