Author: Ward

Today I visited Siena (not Sienna) which is situated halfway between Firenze and Roma.  It is medieval town which includes more than few dozen churches strewn throughout its meandering hilly streets.  I am thankful for the calves Seattle has given me as I really needed them today to roam around the town.  I arrived a little before noon and soon discovered to my delight that it is already preparing for the Christmas season with the hanging of lights throughout the streets; sadly I was only there during the day so I missed actually seeing them lit.  There is apparently a university located in the town which I stumbled upon as I at first through the buildings were a part of the church I was exploring.  It is sometimes difficult for this American to comprehend being able to work and live in such history; I am very envious of the students.

Given that today was extremely overcast and a bit chilly I decided to spend a disproportionate amount of my time indoors.  I stumbled upon Duomo di Siena (Cathedral of Siena) in my meanderings whereupon I purchased a ticket to visit the museum, crypt, cathedral, and climb up some very steep and narrow rounding stairs to get a panoramic view of the town.  What excited me about the cathedral is that they allow photographs, albeit without use of flash or tripod.  I had hoped to take some long exposure photographs; however, given this was not an option I instead opted to rely on HDRI which I just started using yesterday in Firenze.  While I think long exposures are preferable in these situations, nevertheless HDR allows me to grab photographs that would otherwise require a tripod or a god-like steady-hand which I am not blessed with.

Siena is Firenze toned down in terms of tourism.  It very much reminded me of Cambridge, England when I visited three years ago right before Christmas.  People are out and about, chatting, window-shopping and generally doing the things that people do that live in a city.  Certainly the city caters to tourists and frankly does a very admirable job of doing so at a very reasonable price in terms of tickets and audio-guides.  For people looking to explore Roma and Tuscany then I highly suspect Siena is just about the perfect size and location for a vacation geared at taking it slower and yet affording itself the opportunity to drink in all that Roma, Siena, Firenze and Tuscany has to offer.

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After what amounted to a rather dull day for photographs yesterday, I headed back out in Firenze in hopes of getting some pictures that better captured both the color of the buildings and the nature of the Tuscan light.  To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with the results from yesterday.  Simply put, the photographs did not capture the intensity of light and shadow that I recalled seeing with my own eye.  Some of this can be attributed to my own lack of ability with a camera; however, some of the blame rests squarely on the camera itself.

Basically a camera, any camera, is never as good as the human eye.  The ability to capture the same level of sensitivity is referred to as dynamic range.  Most cameras do a good job when the intensity of light is fairly similar throughout the area of the image; however, issues arise when we have lots of shadows and bright spots.  At present, to compensate for a cameras inability to mimic the human eye there are various techniques available.  One of these techniques is referred to as high dynamic range imaging (HDR or HDRI).  This is accomplished by basically taking 3 or 5 images of the exactly the same subject but under different speeds while maintaining the same aperture.  Doing this obtains a set of images that accurately portray the subject at different light intensities.  Software such at HDRsoft’s PhotoMatix then combines the images into a composite image.

I appreciate that HDR(I) can and is abused by any number of people.  And I will be, as of this post, including myself amongst this not so elite group of persons.  In many instances I have subdued the amount of processing to keep more in-line with a single-shot image.  In other instances I have intentionally amped things out to help highlight colors and provide emphasis to portions of the image.  And like anything termed “art”, there will be people who like the results and those who do not.  Regardless, at the end of the day there is really nothing special to HDR other than an extra step (or two) to the post-processing of images.  That all said, I do feel that some of the images I took today better capture the beauty and wonder that is Firenze.

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I arrived in Firenze (Florence) from Napoli on an express train a little before 10 AM today.  By 11 AM I was settled in my home away from home till this Saturday when I depart for Athens, Greece.  I stumbled upon this gem searching the internet last Sunday and reserved at a price much below what was listed.  While I do not intend to be in the apartment too long any one day, it is great to have a full kitchen with gas stove, washer (no dryer), two bedrooms (you can never have enough), and a full shower.  It is easy walking distance to nearly everything being as it is located in downtown Firenze.

Not too long after settling in I got myself and my camera back outside to do a bit of walking and sightseeing.  I immediately headed to Duomo (incidentally I can see Duomo’s dome from my bedroom window) and paid 6-euro for the honor of climbing the four-hundred-fourteen steps to get a terrestrial view of city from the top of the tower next to Duomo.   Once back on terra firma, even this Seattle-ite decided to listen to the suggestions of the rather insistent rain  and find myself something to do indoors: visit Gallery of Uffizi.  I normally do not like to take photographs at museums since so much of what can be seen is better seen in-person or in an art-book; however, today I wished to take exception.  It is not so much the artwork which I wish I could share with you through photography but the gallery; it is a piece of art unto itself.  Unfortunately, they had strict policies against any photography so I refrained.  But as a point of matter, the gallery truly really needs to be experienced first-hand to be understood and appreciated.  And now you have an excuse to come to Firenze; you can thank me later.

Upon leaving the gallery I headed toward the River Arno and then across the Ponte Vecchio toward the Boboli Gardens.  Instead of going to the gardens and Belvedere Fort, I headed toward Michelangelo Piazza to get a view of the city proper.  While there I enjoyed watching an incoming thunderstorm lay itself over the city and surrounding hills.  Its fast approach sent me faster to the church of San Miniato al Monte where I weathered out the storm.  Upon returning to the outside I believe I experienced one of those “under the Tuscan sun” moments when I just stood there and smiled from ear to ear.  My photographs of those moments are poor substitute to the moment I tried to capture.

I now sit comfortably in my home writing this all the while preparing to go back out into the Firenze night to capture some more photographs and possible enjoy a bistecca alla fiorentina (also known under the more pedestrian name of t-bone steak in English), a speciality of the region.

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Napoli is a city, as many before me have iterated and I will re-iterate, that either you love or your hate.  My first impressions of Napoli are not wholly positive albeit not wholly negative.  My biggest issue is the amount of garbage that piles up on some streets; this is an issue that I recall on the news three years ago when I was in Roma.  And here we are three years later and the situation seems to have become the status quo.  Compounding this is the amount of road construction currently underway; I cannot tell if this is some momentary blip that when complete will elevate Napoli into the beautiful metropolis that I believe it rightly deservers per its grand heritage, or whether this public works will, too, become the status quo of Napoli streets.  We do need to keep some things in perspective.  Most everyone, including Italians, like to caution you against Napoli as a city of extremes so I was already a bit tense to visit it.  In addition, the days I have been here it has been overcast and raining.  And more so, given it is November the sun is rises around 6:30 AM and sets up 4:30 PM.  Add all of these things together and it can make for seemingly very short, very oppressive days.

However, at the end of my second day in Napoli and after a long day of walking around Pompeii I decided I might try to walk some of the streets to get a feel for the city.  What I saw and experienced makes me think that it is indeed possible, even easy, to fall in love with this city.  It is gritty both with modernity and antiquity, an obvious menagerie of ideas and styles that have infused themselves into each other to such an extent it is hard to know what bit comes from what century or millennia.  The city pulses with an easy intensity that southern Italians exude out of every pour.   There is not a single person who will not meet you eye to eye; but there is not a person who will try to intimidate you.  I even got the wink of a few women and possibly one transexual so one cannot say Italian women are timid. And you might say I am naive thinking they were not prostitutes.  But you have your version and I have my version.  The city is, like any great city, alive.  I do not think it is possible to see beneath the skin of Napoli on any length of visit; I sincerely suspect it is a city that defies outsiders effortlessly, subconsciously.  The only way to experience Napoli, or so I suspect, is to crawl deep into the heart of Napoli and live inside of it.

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Today I went to Pompeii on what is my second and last day in Naples.  (For the curious, the ruins of the ancient city are spelled “Pompeii” and the living city surrounding it is spelled “Pompei”.)  While I started the morning early, the Italian train system decided to thwart my endeavors, making me wait for 80 minutes for the train to Salerno to finally depart.  Granted, it has been overcast and raining most of the day today so waiting always means there is a small chance that it will clear up so waiting seemed more like an opportunity than other.  On the ride to Pompeii I had a pleasant talk with a resident of Salerno who explained to me a bit of the history of Napoli, which means “New City”, in reference to the Romans destroying the Greek city originally there and then building over top of it.  He also mentioned that it takes at least five days to see all of Napoli; next time!

I took a quick five-minute walk from Pompei’s train station to the southern most entry of Pompeii itself.  I found out that this is not the gate most people recommend starting from; however, the positive of this is that most of the early-morning tourists like myself were on the other end of the forty-five hectares of renovated ancient ruins.  To which I was glad since less people allows me to focus on getting shots without the odd balding head in the shot.  The ruins are quite extensive, providing an opportunity to immerse myself in what life might have been around 79 BC in what was then a colony of Rome.  You can visit numerous pubic areas, some seating up to five-thousand people to smaller, more acoustically-tuned centers for sharing music and poetry.  There are a number of bakeries and stores and even a bath-house available for direct viewing.  What is more, there is even a large house of prostitution replete with visual guidance for patrons needing a clue on how to get the most out of their money; a lot like Ikea assembly instructions if you think about it.  Pompeii is, like so much of a good thing, a lot of information and visual stimulation to process in a single day.   My only regret is the rain obscured my view of Mount Vesuvius which I would have dearly like to have seen.

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