Depth perception #3
I enjoy architectural shots where there is a confusion between the background and the foreground caused by the two-dimensional nature of photography
two photos from Florence
Depth perception #2
On the Amalfi coast in Italy you have many opportunities to take photos like this from the road. I managed to take of few shots like this even though I am a bit afraid of heights and Italian drivers.
Depth perception #1
This photo has a foreground- the flowers, a middleground -the exposed cliffs and background - the sea. Probably a mile down yet photo looks like it could be ten feet! The problems with the 2D nature of photography. The one below I think works better- probably because we know what size houses should be.
All those Italians
I found it interesting to see the names of a number of people I know prominently displayed
Colonna is the name of one of the partners at my Accounting firm and my son works for a Damiani
Is he afraid of getting "pooped" on?
It was quite hard to find statues without pigeons on them - at the beginning it is funny but after a while it just seems wrong. We saw quite a few later that had very fine needles attached to the sculptures to prevent the birds from landing.
atget influence
Before leaving on holiday I was looking at a few Atget books particularly with his later photos of parks and his use of negative space. I was surprised that while I was in Barola Park in Florence I felt a little bit in his time period.
I converted the second one to black and white below
If I take pictures long enough....
I started taking photos of laundry hanging out to dry while in Croatia - I like incongruities and I felt that it somehow didn't belong hanging within the castled walls of Dubrovnik - but to you need sufficient photos of one subject to make it worthy of presentation. I was looking at a very nice retrospective book of Guy Martin Ravel's photos but felt it was weakened by a set of people carrying things which had a number of good images but needed a lot of filler to legitimize a section in the book.
My "illegal" photo at the Sistine Chapel
I couldn't resist - although you can only see 5 or 6 people taking photos in this picture - it is only my poor skill as a photographer not to get more - there was a guy filming even- but I don't see him here.
Photographer and subject
While walking around this cemetery in Cortona I saw this photo being taken; and felt a little old not taking the same kind of photo of my wife ( But I still do love to photograph her - out of 2200 photos I took in Italy - 150 or so include her in the picture)
Headless Horse
This horse stayed in this pose long enough for me to take the picture, and point it out to my wife. It was very funny in that when you are on holiday and everything is new and unusual - my wife was confused for a few seconds!
A couple more solitary souls
continuation from yesterday -
I have been taking this series of photos since I went to see an exhibit at the Tate Modern called
"Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera"
a couple of souls on stairs
I like taking photos of individuals on steps - below are a "couple" from Italy
Photos at 1/1000 of a second
I don't usually give any technical advice or tips - probably because I can't - but I figured out that to take photos from a moving car one can just set the camera at 1/1000 of a second and put on auto ISO and you can get some not bad photos - two from the road in Tuscany.
The art of cropping or the cropping of art
At the Uffizi in Florence I was captivated by this portrait of Eleonora and her son by Agnolo Bronzino, and while in the book store saw that each of these book covers had cropped it slightly differently; all had removed some of the right side. She was a very powerful woman at the time and the uncropped version makes her arm more prominent and in my mind more powerful and less motherly.
below is a photo of the painting from the web
also interesting that when I was looking for the original that there were many other crops ofs the same picture!
Sense of scale #3
if you only looked at this photo you may think that there was a crowd - the bottom photo shows the reality - reminiscent of the films of the toppling of a Saddam Hussein statue
Sense of scale #2
We stayed a few days in Positano- while walking I came across this "sculpture" of the town; below is a photo of it from above.
Useless Door #80 and 81
I was sure I would find a couch (for alexbrzcouches.blogspot.com) in here somewhere but all I got was a useless door
really more than one
Useless? door # 79
Which one is useless - the normally useless door is giving information about the real useless door
( a little work making the door more readable )
Useless doors #77 and 78
a little break from Italy
Just in case you thought this was just the other side of the one above- it is actually the one below that is the other side of this one
