Florence, Italy

No, I'm not in Italy right now, but my family took a trip there this summer, and I'm just getting around to showing y'all the pictures! It's bright and sunny here in Seattle, so I wanted to post some colorful pictures from our trip. 

We stopped in Florence for four days and stayed in a cute little local hotel called the Hotel Alessandra. The concierge was the most adorable, friendliest, and overall helpful person we met in Florence.

My brother and I were fascinated by the Duomo, a cathedral originally built in the Roman times, and consequently re-built throughout the ages. The architecture is Italian gothic in style, and is just overwhelmingly huge. The facade is entirely made of different colored marble (!!).

These pictures were taken from the campanile (the bell tower) right next to the Duomo. The brother and I climbed all 414 steps (it is 278 feet tall!), taking pictures along the way.  It was a lovely sunny day which offset the building's colors and created some nice shadows and highlights.

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This picture was taken looking out one of the ventilation slots in the campanile. My aim was the frame the picture with the ventilation slot (though it looks like the top didn't quite make it), and simultaneously show the beautiful orange roofs of the city disappearing into the hills.

I do like how you can see in the bottom of the picture that someone had traced some filigrees into the grime. I think it adds a little extra texture to the picture, making it more realistic and less just a pretty picture.

Because there are so many straight lines and curves in the building's facade, I wasn't sure how to display them without overwhelming the viewer. So I only put about the top third of the Duomo in the frame, focused on the dome (with the roof to offset all the marble), and looked for the shadows from the other parts of the structure to add some depth.

I'm very happy that we had blue skies, because the same pop of color would not have happened with overcast skies.

I hope you are enjoying the lovely spring days in your region! (Is the snow finally melting??)

Recording the beauty of long-stemmed flowers

Hello all! My family had a lovely visitor who is friends with my brother from college stay with us. She is in the coast guard, and needed a place to stay for a few days, so we opened up our house to her, and in return, she gave us some lovely long-stemmed flowers! I'm not sure what kind they are, but they are beautiful! This is the first time I've ever seen any long-stemmed anything! I might have to treat myself to some later on in the winter when things tend to look a little gray around here....

Here's any interesting fact: in Russia and many other Eastern countries, it is considered rude to give an even number of flowers. I believe that this gesture has something to do with death or bad wishes. I also know that in flower arrangement, it is best to use an odd number of flowers so that the eye can find a place to rest and look at instead of peering between two flowers or something. So our visitor (who is well-traveled) gave us five long stemmed flowers. 

I thought they deserved to become photographic evidence of beauty :)

I couldn't get all five in the picture, but I thought I would try to show their long stems. Aren't the colors beautiful together? And the petals really are this rich deep pink.

The underside of the petals are equally interesting

The rest of these pictures were all taken in the filtered sunlight in my dining room. They turned out rather well with nice shadows!

I love the little detail of the fluted ends of the petals and how the light highlights them!

Have a nice day! It is supposed to be up in the 80s here (this is considered boiling where I live :P )