Florence 2011: Day2 (Second Half)

Okay, so if you've been reading my blog, you will all know that i didn't quite get round to finishing day 2 of the Florence trip. So here it is...

Following the morning in Siena, we hoppped on the coach again to travel so San Gimignano. Once again the coach journey was another hour, so I put my earphones in and satback listening to a playlist of Burial, Synkro, Phaeleh and chillout producers. The hour passed fairly quickly and we were soon in San Gimignano, again a very beautiful place, but it was starting to get a bit boring and i just wanted to go back to the Hotel and get pissed.

After 10-15 minutes of wandering around, we started to see a couple children, dressed up with little bags of confetti just throwing it on the streets. It was a bit wierd at first, but apparantly it was some sort of carnival day. I didn't think much of it at first and just assumed i was going to see a few italian children leaving patches of confetti for the rest of the day.

Then, all of a sudden, me and my friend saw a few adults dressed up too, and a fairly large float with some kind of creepy witch-clown on it. There were people dressed as snow white, clowns and hippies along with even more children which were starting to arrive...apparantly we had arrived just in time to watch this carnival.

A few minutes later, there were swarms of people. Everyone had confetti and there was loud music blaring out. This day had suddenly started to liven up a bit, and it was brilliant to see everyone just let go as the streets became covered in confetti!

The whole place came alive and it was just a massive free for all, with everyone thowing confetti, dancing and laughing! it was a brilliant atmosphere, and i managed to grab plenty of shots.

As you can see the atmosphere was brilliant, and everyone was just covered!

Once the carnival was over and everyone started to leave, we made are way back to the coach. It was getting dark and everyone was exhausted, yet ready for another night out. Once we got back to the hotel, the night panned out pretty much the same as the night before. We had a delicious meal, and went out drinking once again. We also made sure to return to our favourite cafe/bar, where we recieve yet another 2 free shots each...brilliant!

Florence 2011: Day2 (First half)

I know this is well overdue as i was planning on doing one part a day! but its been busy busy times atm, and as i result I've hardly been able to read other peoples blogs also...alas, i am back, and here is my account of day 2 :)

At 7pm, with a slightly hazy head, we had to wake up, shower and go for breakfast. As expected, breakfast was the usual shitty continental, meat, bread and cheese. Although, i wasn't complaining, any food is good food! Shortly after breakfast we had to make our way outside where our coach was waiting for us, to take us to Siena. After about an hour journey we finally arrived in Siena, and much like the rest of Italy, what a beautiful place it was. After some time of weaving through the side side streets and tall buildings, we emerged in the 'Piazza del Campo', which is a large open square, situated roughly in the center of Siena. It was nice to be able to take a step back and view the outstanding architecture that was present.

This was the only shot i took of the Piazza del Campo, as compositionally it didnt make for a good photography, well not without a wide-angle lens anyway. But I assure you, it was a beautiful place.

Following grouping in the center, we then had our free time to wander and take some photographs and just generally go off in our own direction. In a group of me and two of my friends, we decided to locate the Duomo of Siena. Much like the one in Florence, its architectually outstanding, and I felt honoured to be looking at such fine work!

one of the few ive actually edited

As you can see, the detailing on the building is just truly amazing! similar to the whole of italy!
But thats it for today, this is just the first half of day 2, but it was quite eventful so i thought i would break it down into 2 sepereate posts. Stay tuned for the rest of this day, where we visited San Gimignano. As for now, here are a couple for snaps of Siena for you to enjoy.

Florence 2011: Day1

Only a couple of weeks ago, during the February half term, i went on a 5-day photography trip to Italy. We stayed in the beautiful city of Florence, and each day visited a new place or two. This is going to be in 5 seperate blog posts, each one describing each day.

On the first day, after long and tiring coach/plane journeys, we eventually arrived in Florence. Florence is home to one of the most architecturally renoun and outstanding buildings in history: The Duomo, and we had a view of it, right from our luxury 2 star hotel ;)

 

 

Above you can the Duomo (well the front of it anyway). It is a truly beautiful piece of architecture and has to be seen face to face to be fully appreciated. Luckily as we arrived the sun was setting casting some beautiful colours onto the Duomo, making for a really nice pictue.

Following our arrival we were given plenty of free time to localise ourselves with the surrounding area and get some good snaps. All i can say is that during the few hours of free time, i was truly amazed at the beauty of florence, the atmosphere was brilliant and all of the buildings had their own character to them.

 

Following our free time, we simply just unpacked and relaxed in the hotel for a few hours, before going out for the evening meal. Obviously pasta was for dinner and it was delicious, miles above the pasta here in england! So all in all it was a good first day, and to top it off we had some more free time after the meal for a drink. Well, while wandering around we managed to find a shop which sold Duff beer. I obviously had to buy 3 purely for the novelty, and after drinking them while walking we found a brilliant little cafe/bar. We decided to stop just for a drink and to chillout, soaking up the atmosphere, and there were 7 of us so we were giving the cafe good business. After each buying a drink or too, the barman came to our table outside with a tray, with a vodka shot each, completely free! What a perfect way to top off the day :D

p.s. also, i am sorry but i've yet to edit those 3 photos, but im sure you can enjoy them nonetheless.

Work, Work, Work...

Well, ive just finished school, and now im at work from 4-10. i'm just a receptionist at a gym so basically get to just sit here and chill out, listening to music.

The sun is shining, and im in quite an uplifted mood today, so at the moment im just listening to a bit of synkro, as his 2-step/garage influenced productions always put me in a good mood.

 
theres just something about his clean, simple productions that really do it for me :)
have a listen for yourself.

B+W ND110 filter

As a photography enthusiast, i have recently purchased an ND (neutral density) filter, with a strength of 10 stops. This is a very dark filter, which essentially enables me to take photographs with a much longer exposure time during daylight hours. Most people from what i have seen, have filters which only stop the exposure down a few stops, enabling the same effect, but not quite so much.

The idea behind being able to take longer exposures during the day, is so that you can take photographs which capture motion. Skies become a lot more textured, and water becomes silky smooth when your exposing on average of 20 seconds, and as can be seen here it makes the image a lot more dramatic and impressive!

unfortunately that image is not mine, however the same filter was used. I managed to find this photograph from a great photographer on their website: AlexWisePhotography
As you can see, with the right scene, the results are simply beautiful. Unfortunately i haven't been able to find a location quite so suitable as of yet, but i have been messing around with local rivers, and so far i have definitely been impressed with this little gizmo!

If anyone is interested in buying said filter, then it can easily be found on the Internet by simply google searching 'ND110' and for an average price of £45 you really can't go wrong!

My Blog

So, this is my first blog post here on blogger. I'll be posting about my two biggest interests, photography and music (mainly Dubstep). I may even post a little here and there on Taekwondo aswell, seeing as i've been training for 5 years. I hope at least somone finds something i post on here useful or interesting, and for now, i shall leave it like this as some sort of little introduction.

Also, here is a picture of an alpaca:

;)