Nellie Windmill

We’ve been travelling through Europe for seven months now and have developed a sort of astronomically high standard when it comes to things to see and do. Mediaeval hill-top towns with charming, impossibly narrow cobbled streets that would have once had me salivating are now generally met with a lacklustre “it’s nice but we’ve seen better”. Ditto for churches and castles. We went to Assisi and didn’t step foot into a church. When we saw photos of the Siena Duomo, however, the newly found HDR photographers in us couldn’t wait to photograph it and it didn’t disappoint.

One of the first things we noticed about this gothic masterpiece was the cacophony of detail in the facade. We’ve both often wondered at the practicality of such lavish detail that is going to be viewed from a great distance. A sculpture that may have taken months to complete may never be focused on for itself but will just blend into the rest!

We wandered the town before entering the Duomo in order to avoid a school group that was just about to go in. I didn’t find the town itself particularly captivating – there was none of the grandeur of Rome, the beauty of Florence or the charm of tiny villages but the piazza was rather impressive in its vastness.

We spent hours in the Duomo being generally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photogenic goodness and not wanting to miss a great shot. Truly, we would have had lacklustre photos if not for our new found HDR skills given the bright spots of light coming in through the windows and the lamps with the rest being in shadow. Tripods weren’t allowed even if we had one so my shoulder and both of us holding our breath was the next best thing.

I love that those dudes above look like they’re at a rock concert, fist-pumping the air.

Another thing that’s easy to overdose on during an extended jaunt through Europe is religious themed art, especially in Italy. One of the highlights of the Siena Duomo for me was the library which had massive illuminated vellum hymn books on display. To my delight they were filled with creatures and floral designs that could easily slot into a pop surrealism painting today. This guy put me strongly in mind of an X-Men cartoon:

Awesome afro.

By far my favourite little guys were these dolphin-like creatures that I could totally see in a Greg “Craola” Simkins painting – they’ve even got his trademark pearls!

I felt such a powerful sense of kindred-spiritness through this vast span of time with the whimsical soul who conjured up these bizarre creatures. It’s the first time that I felt I could really relate to a specific person from another time period and it made me reel a little bit at the… I don’t know, interconnectedness of it all, I suppose. You can’t get much more modern than pop surrealism in the art world. Like the Impressionists and the Salon, pop surrealism artists are still largely unaccepted by mainstream galleries: That’s how new it is. Yet, here’s some dude illuminating hymn books with these imaginary slightly creepy creatures almost 600 years ago that could be published in the funkadelic Hi-Fructose magazine today. This to me, was much more interesting than seeing an umpteenth Madonna and baby Jesus.

After spending some time pouring over the books Mike asked me if I’d looked up yet.

Thank goodness for zoom lenses and digital SLRs because it turned out there were more creepy creature goodies all the way up there getting lost in the “more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-ness”.

We probably could have stayed and spent another hour or two photographing the cathedral but we were racing daylight so we headed off at peak hour, as usual, for our home for the night – a sosta in the delightfully named town of Poggibonsi.

This is my first blog post about our travels in Italy since being back from Tunisia. It’s been decadent, heavenly and good for the soul after spending 3 long months living in a developing country. It’s been so nice being anonymous again (that is, not the only westerner, which seems to translate as “I am rich please come and ask me for money or whisky”) in Tunisia. The one downside is that I’ve put all the weight back on that I lost in Tunisia due to their lack of cheese. The best part is gorging ourselves on all the cheese!

Mike and I have taken our photography to the next level by learning about “HDR” – High Dynamic Range photography. I was inspired by the blog of Trey Ratcliff – Stuck in Customs – to finally take the leap but had been a bit in awe of what I’d seen around the interwebs for a long time as well. I originally learnt how to use Photoshop because I was very interested in blending my paintings with photography. In a similar vein, the particular style of HDR photography that I am interested in results in a “painterly” looking photograph. However, my main motivation for learning more about this technique was the realisation that we’re seeing some pretty amazing places and things and if we put a little bit of effort into learning more and improving our photography we could build a fairly impressive portfolio. I had a stabby fear when I thought about coming to the end of our travels and thinking “huh, we really could’ve taken better photos“. I would never be able to forgive myself for that. No regrets!

As they say, a picture says a thousand words so here’s a before and after HDR photograph to give you an idea:

Before

After

Chieti Good Friday Procession

There have been many highlights since being back in Italy. Often it seems like each day is better than the last. An absolutely unforgettable experience though was the Good Friday Procession in Chieti. It’s an ancient tradition and going by the strange garb and bewildering symbology I suspect it hasn’t changed much since ye olde times either – apart from the glow sticks, of course.


I believe each of those doodads attached to the cross symbolise one of the 14 stages of the cross.






I haven’t the faintest why they wear those hoods, but man were the little children creepy. What really set the atmosphere though was the hundred-strong marching orchestra – mainly violins – and all-male choir booming their hymn through the mediaeval streets.

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Now for something a bit more cheerful. We stayed at an agriturismo place just outside of a town called “Penne” for a couple of weeks. They had this gorgeous lawn filled with tiny white flowers and strewn all over it were these brightly coloured miniature play-things for children. I spent one sunny spring day snapping away and probably getting some very strange looks from the owners as I got down on hands and knees to capture the perspective I wanted.







To wrap up, here are some miscellaneous pretties for you. An Umbrian field:

And a very sexy tree in the back yard of a lovely Italian couple who had us over for a thousandth course lunch, dinner, and breakfast!