No gear, just sunshine

Sometimes, you don't need camera gear, just a bit of sunshine and a phone works just fine :-)

Chicago T-shirt & shots

I'm not much into T-shirt design, but my daughter suggested that one of my recently re-worked pictures would make a cool T-shirt. So here it is...

Here is the original shot and its sibling...These were taken back in 2008, but I only now got around to processing them :-)

 

1 shot, 2 moods?

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Interesting to see how much you can affect the mood of a single picture by different editing. What mood do you get from each version? [shot & pp on iPhone]

Someone explain fishing to me?...

Saturday morning, Grand Union Canal (New Bradwell, Milton Keynes, Bucks, UK)

I understand the concept of getting in a boat at 5am and heading out to sea, anchoring 5 miles out and getting lost in your own thoughts for a few hours. I understand the purpose of fishing, in that sense... But can someone explain the purpose of this to me?

Giorni, senza domani...

"Days, without tomorrow..."

A line from my favourite Italian song - "A Casa d'Irene" by Nico Fidenco. (You can find the lyrics with a translation here)

This was shot around midnight, on one of the side streets of Piazza Noveno, in the centre or Rome. The lonely ghostly figure seems to be wandering aimlessly... looking for Irene's house perhaps?

[Sony a350, Sigma 17-70@70mm; f/10, 2.5sec, ISO 100; LR3]

On RedBubble

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi - Piazza Navona, Rome

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi is the largest fountain on Piazza Navona, in the centre or Rome, Italy. It was built in 1651 by Gianlorenzo Bernini. The four gods on the corners of the fountain represent the four major rivers of the world known at the time: the Nile, Danube, Ganges, and Plate, each design carrying its own symbolism. The one shown here is the river-God Ganges.

I managed to escape from business conference in the outskirts of Rome, just in time to catch the last glimpse of light in the sky in Piazza Navona :-)

[Sony a350, Sigma 17-70@26mm, f/14, 13sec, ISO-100; LR3]

http://www.redbubble.com/people/monocotylidono/art/6566071-2-fontana-dei-quattro-fiumi-piazza-navone-rome

Photography - The very humble servant

"It is time, then, for it [photography] to return to its true duty, which is to be the servant of the sciences and arts— but the very humble servant, like printing or shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature. Let it hasten to enrich the tourist’s album and restore to his eye the precision which his memory may lack; let it adorn the naturalist’s library, and enlarge microscopic animals; let it even provide information to corroborate the astronomer’s hypotheses; in short, let it be the secre­tary and clerk of whoever needs an absolute factual exac­titude in his profession—up to that point nothing could be better. Let it rescue from oblivion those tumbling ruins, those books, prints and manuscripts which time is devouring, precious things whose form is dissolving and which demand a place in the archives of our memory—— it will be thanked and applauded."

Charles Baudelaire - Salon de 1859

I've been reading a very interesting book called "The Invention of photography - The first fifty years" by Thames & Hudson. Very interesting coverage, not so much of the history of the technology but of the personalities and then perceptions at the time.

At that time there was much debate on whether phtography could even be considered art, and the excerpt above is from an article by Baudelaire (you can read the complete article here, it's worth a read and has many other little nuggets) in 1859. Although the article itself is arguing that photography has its place and will not supersede art, I found the excerpt above very insighful, especially in today's context of digital preservation and archiving, and touching on ideas like macro!

G.