Category Archives: Color

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Street, Travel

Old Cars, Trastevere

November 19, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

I love old cars. When I was in high school, I drove a 1962 Nash Metropolitan aka a bathtub on wheels, aka the car that floats (but it doesn’t- it’s not an Amphicar, which did float and drive in water- the Met just looks buoyant). I loved that car despite all its flaws and shortcomings. So I get a visceral reaction when I run across antique cars. These two were outside a restaurant in my neighborhood (which I did not have a chance to try).

Both were being used to advertise the restaurant. I don’t think the truck got driven around much if at all, what with the barrels in the bed with the restaurant name branded into them, and the pumpkins and gourds on top. The FIAT wagon, though, certainly looked like it could be used. I passed them on two different days and on both days neither vehicle appeared to have moved any.

The FIAT wagon looks like the kind of car I’d enjoy having, though – folding canvas top, cute 1950s design, compact enough to be useable in the city, but enough space to haul stuff around. And it would definitely make all the right noises and have that old car smell. You know, a touch of motor oil and unburnt gasoline, combined with the funk of aging upholstery. Terrible cologne idea, but inside an old car? Magic.

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Portraits, Street, Travel

Mailbox, Trastevere, Rome

November 18, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Rome is a city known for many things – fine food, ancient architecture, more churches than you can shake a stick at, and among other things, graffiti. This poor mailbox has been heartily defaced – scribbled on, stickered, and overall abused. Yet it still soldiers on in its duty, collecting the mail. Here is my portrait of the mailbox to elevate it into the pantheon of my Ordinary Objects series:

Something I found fascinating was the degree to which English has penetrated into Italian life. In the big cities, almost everyone speaks it to some degree or other. Signage in museums is in Italian and English – no French, no German, no Spanish, no anything else. Just English and Italian. Even the graffiti is often in English, like the little mushroom to the right of the mailbox here, and some obscenities on a wall outside the Garbatella Metro station (forthcoming in a future post). I don’t know what quite to make of it – while it makes life easier for me as a visitor who is not proficient in Italian (I can fake it ’til I make it based on my fluency in Spanish), I do worry about global homogenization.

Architecture, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

The Campanile of Giotto, The Duomo, Florence

November 18, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

The bell tower, or campanile, of the Duomo in Florence. It is referred to as Giotto’s Campanile because it was designed by the famous painter Giotto, who had become the second Master of Works at the Cathedral after a 30 year gap following the death of his predecessor.

He created the polychrome marble scheme for the tower to match that which had already been designed for the cathedral itself, and saw the completion of the first floor of the tower before his own death in 1337. Today, the bell tower is as much a symbol of Florence as the dome of the cathedral or the Palazzo Vecchio.

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Portraits, Street, Travel

Payphone, Florence

November 18, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Another in my Portraits of Ordinary Objects series.

I’ve been working on this series for a while now, photographing common things we see every day and take for granted. I keep on doing this around the world, photographing pay phones, mail boxes, trash cans, fire hydrants, all the little things that populate the overlooked corners of our daily lives. The interesting thing about them is that despite cultural differences (mailboxes in France are yellow, in the US they’re red and blue) they’re pretty much instantly recognizable across all cultures. You don’t have to be a Spaniard to recognize a Spanish mail box, pay phone, or trash receptacle.

Black and White, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Water Fountains

November 13, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

When I get finished processing all 79 rolls of film from this trip, I’ll have more of these to add, but until then, here’s a selection of public fountains. The Italians certainly love their water features and drinking fountains.

I’m certain I mentioned this before about the ancient fountain at the Colosseum, how you plug the bottom to get water to come out a hole in the top of the pipe so you don’t have to bend over to drink.

Well, here you can see that in action, at a similar fountain in the Castel Sant’Angelo:

Drinking Fountain, Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome — Drinking Fountain, Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome

And a full view of the fountain:

Acqua Potabile, Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome — Acqua Potabile, Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome

Here’s a little fountain in the piazza in front of San Lorenzo in Florence:

Lion Head Fountain, San Lorenzo, Florence

The Cellini fountain and memorial on the Ponte Vecchio. The interesting thing about it is that the fountain and memorial are 19th century, and their placement on the Ponte Vecchio is a little disingenuous.The bridge today is occupied by goldsmiths and jewelers, true, but in Cellini’s day, the Ponte Vecchio was home to butchers. Other than picking up his Saturday prosciutto, he didn’t spend time on the bridge. The modern day jewelers are just claiming inspiration from him.

Cellini Fountain, Ponte Vecchio, Florence

A fountain at the Pantheon, under the obelisk in the plaza in front:

Another public drinking fountain, on the Ponte Vecchio, in Florence. This one is actually a drinking fountain, whereas the Cellini monument is purely decorative.

Drinking Fountain, Ponte Vecchio, Florence

The fountain in the forecourt to the Palazzo Barberini, backlit by the afternoon sun:

A fountain in the Villa Borghese park, directly in front of the Palazzo Borghese:

A closeup detail of the Villa Borghese fountain:

A fountain outside the Vatican, with the water spigots emerging from the heads of Papal keys, crowned by a quartet of Papal tiaras:

A garden-variety public drinking fountain in Trastevere, the neighborhood where I lived in Rome:

A fountain crowned with a pinecone finial in the Piazza Venezia, especially appropriate decoration as it sits beneath a canopy of the famous pines of Rome.

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Street, Travel

Souvenir Kodak Film, Florence

November 7, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

This little souvenir shop is in an alleyway just off the Piazza del Duomo in Florence. The shop is sill in business, but I caught it early in the morning before they opened. I felt it was a good metaphor for Kodak- the name is still recognizable and marketable, but it’s rather sleepy, dusty, and to many folks it’s perceived as already shuttered.

Of course, I took this with the latest generation of Kodak color film – Ektar 100 – which is perhaps the finest grained, most color-accurate film ever made.

Architecture, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Street, Travel

Yellow Wall, Garbatella

November 3, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

As I was coming down the stairs from the pedestrian overpass connecting the Garbatella Metro station with the other side of the railroad tracks, I saw this scene. This is actually about repetition, in a way: a repetition of one.

There’s one lamppost, one van, one A/C unit, and one yellow wall. A series of solitudes.

Abstract, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Street, Travel

Leaf, Cobblestones, Centrale Montemartini

November 3, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Just a one-off today – a single leaf that had turned brown and fallen on the black cobblestones outside the Centrale Montemartini museum.

In travel, you make plans, and if you’re smart, you have either backup plans or you’re open to serendipity. I do a bit of both.

I had wanted to go see the Museo Centrale Montemartini, which is a collection of overflow ancient sculptures from the collections of the Capitoline Museums in downtown Rome, housed in a former power generation plant along the Tiber river. I had figured I’d go there on Monday, since most museums are closed on Monday, but the Capitoline Museums are open on Mondays. Well… long story short, Centrale Montemartini may be part of the Capitoline Museum group, but since it’s three subway stops out of downtown, it’s not like the ones on the hill overlooking the Forum, and it DOES close on Mondays. So I found myself in semi-suburban Rome looking at a closed museum, camera in hand. What’s a girl to do when faced with a loaded camera and a closed museum? Photograph the first fallen leaf of fall on some artfully laid cobblestone blocks in the museum driveway (and get honked at by a scooter driver for blocking the two and a half lane wide driveway). It also gave me time to shoot the bridge you saw in a previous post.

Architecture, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

The Colosseum, Rome

November 3, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

The Colosseum is truly one of the marvels of ancient Rome. A building that could seat somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 (the higher number comes from an ancient source – modern estimates are lower) but evacuate them all in just minutes, hosted mock sea battles, and was designed and constructed without the use of decimals or precision measurement systems.

There is an ongoing project to restore and stabilize the outer wall of the Colosseum. To that end, they’ve wrapped parts of the exterior in scaffolding to assist in the work.

Viewed from a different angle, the scaffold takes on the appearance of a modern skyscraper.

I spotted this bit of graffiti on a wall outside the entrance to the Colosseo Metro station.

A simple shot of the Colosseum exterior wall in a section not undergoing stabilization work.

You’ll notice I have no shots of the interior of the Colosseum. I did not make it inside. Traveler’s tip – if you want to see it without booking a tour, you need to buy a timed entry ticket, which you can get from the ticket booth at the entrance to the Forum. Get the ticket from the Forum (it lets you in to both the Forum and the Colosseum) instead of trying to get it directly from the Colosseum. Why? Because the line to get in, EVEN if you have the RomaPass card, is about 2-3 hours long.

There will be lots of touts outside the Colosseum offering tours that will let you skip the line to get inside. Most of these will have the sole value of letting you skip the line – the guides are of varying and often poor quality. You’re better off pre-booking your tour in advance through an agency with online reviews that you can tell how good a program they offer. The advantage of a pre-booked tour is that the tour guides will be able to take you in to parts of the Colosseum you can’t enter if you just go in yourself.

You’ll find public drinking fountains all over Rome. It’s one of the charming features of the city. Unlike fountains in some cities, they run continuously. You can fill a cup or a kettle from the spigot, or if you just want a sip, you can put your finger under the water spout to block it and water will squirt up from a small hole in the top of the pipe so you don’t have to hang upside down to get your water fix.

That’s a try-at-your-own-risk activity though – if the water pressure on the spout you’re blocking is good, it comes out the little hole with quite some velocity – I tried it on this fountain and got a thorough squirting in the face. Given the heat of the day it was a welcome squirt, but not expected.

I don’t know how old the trough under the spigot is, but it appears to be of the late Imperial era. It may have always been a water trough, or it may have been a sarcophagus – it’s the right size for it. But probably only in Rome will you be able to drink your water in a 1700 year old water fountain.

A detail of the carvings on the fountain.

Architecture, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Bridge, Garbatella Metro, Rome

November 1, 2015 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Italy isn’t all about ancient structures – while there are historical and architectural marvels aplenty in the center of the city of Rome, modern architecture happens too. At the Garbatella Metro station, this enormous viaduct that carries a four lane road over the railway tracks soars into the sky like a giant DNA strand or a dinosaur skeleton bleached white in the sun.

Everything about this bridge was designed with an artistic conceit, even the railings that surround the suspension cable anchor points – they undulate like the bridge form itself, like a ribbon or a snake winding its way between the cables.

Even the safety barrier between the lanes on the roadway has been thoughtfully designed from an aesthetic as well as functional perspective.

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