19.12.06 "The World As I See It . . . "

By Scott Shephard

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The title of this post is inspired by a song by Jason Mraz by the same title. In the first stanza he sings,

The world as I see it is a remarkable place . . .

From a bird’s eye view I can see it has a well-rounded personality

From a bird’s eye view I can see we are family.”

This photo, taken south of the Italian town of Sienna, shows off the Tuscan countryside at its spring best. During the four days we spent there this past May, we had about 30 minutes of sunshine, bookended by rain and clouds. And I was fortunate enough to have my camera overhead just after sunrise on the day the sun decided to show itself..

Tuscany does indeed have a well-rounded personality. And, like many places I have been both abroad and certainly in South Dakota, there is no doubt that the world is a remarkable place.

DJI Mavic 2 Pro Hasselblad L1D-20c 1/160 sec f5.0 ISO 100

A Stony Gaze

Many of the photos I have posted recently have been resurrected from a fairly large collection of old digital files that have been languishing in a virtual closet. They are a little like old, worn t-shirts that have great sentimental value but should really be turned into rags. My wife even tells me that if I get a new t-shirt, I need to throw an old one away. Imagine that! What if I had to throw one old picture away for every new one I took?Well, that's not in my genes - I blame my parents for being a packrat. And the good thing is that my photos are pretty well organized and that programs like Aperture, iPhoto and Adobe Bridge make it easy to view collections of old pictures.So today's photo was just waiting to see the light of day. It was taken in Venice, Italy, in 2006 and though it looks fairly simple and straight forward, I put about 30 minutes of processing into this to get it the way I wanted it.I'm sure if I had been listening to our tour guide that day, I could tell you more about this man. But I'm afraid I was caught up in my photography. . . .

Duomo Siena

Here's another photo of the Siena Cathedral and one that I adjusted with Apple's raw image processing software called Aperture. I think it's an amazing tool but today I decided it is especially useful to people who shoot architectural interiors in poorly lit places - such as the Duomo Siena. I won't bore you with the technical details, but there are several places within this photo that got special and unique attention - something I never did in Photoshop.If you are wondering about all of those faces that are peering outward, those are portraits of every pope going back to St. Peter, Given that the duomo was built in the 1300's, I wonder if the builders had the foresight and imagination to leave room for at least another seven or eight hundred years of Popes?Canon 5DII 1/60s f/1.4 ISO400 50mm

Under An Amazing Dome

I have a weakness for domes, including this amazing structure. This shot was taken a few years ago and discarded (along with everything else I took in the cathedral.) The problem was that everything seemed so dark. But having found a way to resurrect photos like this, I offer this shot.

01-29-11 Efficiency

Sometimes this blog attempts to be an artist enterprise but I'll have to admit that after over 700 posts, I'm running low on art. So today I am using this blog to document evidence of a lifestyle very different from our big-pickup-4-wheel-drive-our family-of-4-has-5-cars mentality.What you are looking at is a cute, yellow car parked neatly along a backstreet in Rome, Italy. If you saw the price of fuel and the size of back streets in Rome, you'd know what this car would be a smart choice.Notice that it has three wheels and that it's plugged in. How's that for efficiency?

Old Stone Faces

There is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne entitled "The Great Stone Face" which I remember being assigned by a teacher who scared me more than any teacher I ever had. As I remember her, she generally wore an expression of menace and she never smiled. In my mind, she was the real "Stone Face," though she could have also been a double for the Wicked Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz.Of course all of this has nothing to do with this photo, though there are faces portrayed in stone. Where is this? Venice. Who are these people? If I had been listening to our tour guide instead of taking photos, I might know. But I do know that all of these stoney people look friendlier than my scary teacher.

03-02-10 Brunelleschi's Dome - Exterior

To get an idea of the scale of this dome, look closely for the people standing on the walkway around what is called the "lantern." I've never been to the top of this dome but it's on my list.

02-03-10 A Roman Park

This is an early morning shot of a back lit tree in the Borghese Gardens in Rome. There is something prehistoric-looking in these leaves. I don't know what kind of tree this is but it could be a relative of the locust, which grows in some places in South Dakota.

08-29-09 Tuscan Sunrise

Having been put in charge of finding a place to stay near Siena, Italy, I was very proud to have secured lodging in a well-kept Villa a few miles away from the city center. On the grounds of the villa we stayed in a small cottage that had once been a grainery. Just a few feet away from the cottage was a large swimming pool. There was also a main house that had been converted into 4 more apartments. But for two days we had the place to ourselves. The cost per night was $100!

None of these details have anything to do with this photo other than the fact that it was taken near our villa. (I like the sound of that.) I suspect that this view is a bit of a cliche since scenes like this are commonplace around Siena. I half expected to bump into Francis Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun) but her villa is in Cortona.

06-29-09 Back Street - Assisi, Italy

Back in the days of film (the 20th century for those who wonder), I had been to Assisi with a student group and found this spot during the half hour or so I had to wander around on my own. I took a photo using black and white film and liked it except that the exposure wasn't quite right and the print I made from a film scan was a little too grainy.

So, a few years later, I was in Assisi again and I went looking for the spot. Given that Assisi is a maze of streets, I was a little surprised that I actually found it. And this is the photo I took.