I hope I don’t hurt your eyes today, with all of this color. I had a marvelous time capturing the color in Burano on Saturday, and had to share some of it here. (If you read this in a blog reader, come visit to see my new blog header!) I hope you have a color-filled day!
Stepping along Flowers
This image has been popping into my head a lot lately, which means that I should just share it already! A little bit of color and a whole lot of texture can be found in Varenna, a town on the steep edges of Lake Como not too far from where we live. I like that the “streets” in these lake-egde towns are often really stairways up the hillside, and named appropriately in Italian, salita (which means climb, rise, uphill) instead of the usual via (which means street, road, or way). And a stairway means that you can have a fabulous flower display on many levels. I used to want to paint this picture, but for some reason I never did. Maybe that’s because the image was already good just as it was, waiting to be shared with you today. Happy Monday!
City on the Hill
This is Civita di Bagnoregio, a city perched on a hill top in Umbria. It’s a “dead” city – depending on who you talk to there are only a few or no residents. It’s filled with tourists by day, marveling over the city perched on top and carved into the rock of the hill, some back to Etruscan time. Slowly collapsing into the valley below, one cliffside at a time. I love the profile of the town in this image, the buildings and hill against the clouds and distant hillside.
Aaaaah, Venezia
I must share this today, I am compelled to share this today, as we head to Venice this morning for a quick overnight trip. Because we can. I love Venice and Murano and Burano and have had the urge to get back. So we planned this short little trip last weekend, bribing Brandon with the promise of a gondola ride (he’s begged the last two times we were there), and off we go. Because we can. Isn’t that amazing? I am truly, truly lucky.
Farewell, Assisi
At end of the day in Assisi, as we were heading back to il parcheggio (parking garage) we walked past this pretty entry way. Same place we walked past in the morning, same light (shade), but from this angle it looked totally different and caught my attention. Just a little reminder that sometimes we need to turn or look back to where we’ve been, for a different perspective. You never know what you might find.
With this, I’ll move on from Assisi, this wonderful town of stone and flowers and views of the Umbrian countryside.
Time to PLAY!
Today’s image is from the Umbrian hill town of Orvieto. We had two rainy days based in this hill town on our spring break trip. I found I took fewer pictures than normal on these days, probably because it’s hard to hold an umbrella and take a picture and keep your camera dry all at the same time. This image normally wouldn’t make it to my blog. I would include it the overall album of the trip as a nice shot of the streets of the town and the weather of the day, but nothing special. But today, just for fun, I decided to play around with it.
You see, the Pioneer Woman Photography blog recently offered their free actions for Photoshop Elements. Yay! So today I played with them on this photo and was amazed at the all of the different feelings I could get with this one photograph. I view actions as a little like candy – easy to overdose on if you’re not careful, but a little bit is fine! I would love to hear your comments on these. Which do you like? Which don’t you like? Why not? (There is no special order to these, I’ve just uploaded them in alphabetical order by action name – because it was easiest!)
Boost
B&W
Define&Sharpen
Dim the Lights
Fresh & Colorful
Heartland
Lovely & Ethereal
Sepia
Seventies
Soft & Faded
Vintage
I didn’t include all of the actions here, just the ones that I thought “worked” in some way with this image. Some really didn’t work at all! What’s fun about all of this playing is that you learn in the process. I hope you have some time to play too!