Category: Writing

I am not the writer in our house; my partner is.  Nevertheless, from time to time I find myself writing a bit of flash fiction or even poetry and vignettes in a series I call The Sparrow Story.

I truly have no pretensions around the craft of the written word at either a sentence or paragraph level, let alone at something as grandiose as stitching all of that together into a written story.  Can you imagine all those words to write?  Crazy!

Nevertheless, given my obvious insanity and lack of sense of my limits, I do have aspirations of someday producing a written story or two that may not be a complete waste of another human being’s time to read.

Athens

I arrived in Athens Saturday evening after an uneventful journey by various trains and an airplane from Firenze.  Again, I found it surprising that there was no customs to greet me; however, I suspect that since I was arriving from Italy, another member of the European Union, that such issues were of no consideration for our flight.  Getting from the airport to the hotel was as easy as taking the metro to Monastiraki station and walking a few blocks up to my hotel.

The next morning I was up, like all good travelers, to get out and see the city.  Good for Greece but bad for me is the fact that they are in the middle of elections; consequently, all national sites were closed on Sunday.  In some ways this worked out for the best as it provided me a reason to just walk the city and see some of the sites that I may not have seen otherwise.  Some 15 kilometers later I had walked a goodly portion of the neighborhoods, parks and even national cemetery.  I ended my walk at Lycabettus Hill which overlooks all of Athens where I stopped to take in the view and enjoy some Greek coffee.

Today I again awoke early, but this time all the national sites are open to visitors.  Yeah!  But because so many people could not see them yesterday they are all visiting them today.  Boo!  Frankly, there are so few tourists that it is really quite nice since you have much of the place to yourself.  It is certainly warm enough to not require a jacket even if I do see people walking around in winter coats; I suspect this a difference between people acclimated to warmer climes and people like myself who are not.

Athens in some very ways reminds me of Napoli.  There is a lot of graffiti nearly everywhere you look; however, I did find nooks and grannies of neighborhoods that did not show any evidence of tagging.  Unlike Napoli and Italy in general, people smile while out and about; this I find a pleasant change.  In the evenings when people are out and about at cafes is when the city really comes alive.  Every cafe and every restaurant is as much outdoors as it is indoors.  At times it is hard to discern where one restaurant begins and ends given that all the tables and chairs just flow together into a long river of linens and silverware.  My only regret is not being able to see the rest of Greece.

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Siena

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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Firenze vis-à-vis HDR

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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Firenze

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

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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