Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: marcocarmassi on February 07, 2011, 10:49:41 am
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Hi everybody!
Last week, I visited a very peculiar place, Toiano, not so far from my native town. It's a ghost medieval village where the last inhabitant lived around 50 years ago.
So now it's possible to take shots in a unusual silence and walk in the main street surrounded by abandoned old farmhouses.
Here's (http://www.marcocarmassi.com/site/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=81) the direct link to the gallery (http://www.marcocarmassi.com/site/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=81) on my website.
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Marco,
Lovely images indeed and the winter season is perfect to convey the feeling of abandonment.
This is a great set, congratulations.
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Marco, Good shooting. You're doing one of my all time favorite things: chasing ghosts. But I'd be willing to bet that the color balance inside the church was more like this:
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...wringing of wrists, sobbing swells, incense lingers o'er the destitute, defenseless and bruised...my God how the heart pounds in the dizzying clamor of this place...invisible eternities whistling unconstrained!!! Absolutely love this and thank you for taking us to this location...is there more? Must see what I can see of Toiano...wow...I feel storms let loose...
I just realized that the tempest let loose was in response to Russ' excellent WB edit....really got the blood running for me, that being said Marco's original capture took us there in the first place...thanks to both of you...(I'm in for some wild dreams tonight...)
edit:
Aha!... my Italian is not strong, but the gist of the place is here.. http://www.lineatoscana.it/toiano-borgo-palaia-pisa.html
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Marco, I really like both of these, and I also prefer your color balance over Russ's. Russ's may be more "accurate", but it also made the shot mundane. Your color balance infused the scene with an ethereal glow and took it to another level. Photographic art doesn't need to confine itself to mere reportage, and while I tend to prefer accuracy, sometimes a scene calls for a little creative interpretation. I think in this case your sightly surreal color balance works. I don't think it did in some of the work you posted here previously, but for me it succeeds very well with this shot. Good work!
I like the tree, too
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Thanks everybody for comments and critiques.
@RSL: I understand your point of view but comparing your modified photo and the original, there are some hues in the modified one not corresponding to reality; for instance, the altar is made of dazzling white marble (not yellow as in your pic), the same for the marble frame above the altar. The painting has subtle hues of red and orange (gone in your pic) that I tried to pull out. Your version has a yellow dominant not present in the actual scene. Usually, I enhance colors and hues (when i feel it could be good for the shot) but never change anything, especially colors.
@Patricia Wow, what a comment! Thanks a lot! Hope your dream were wild on a positive side :) If you like the subject and wanna see more pics, you can visit the "Ghost town" (http://www.marcocarmassi.com/site/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=81) gallery on my website (http://www.marcocarmassi.com)
@popnfresh I'm glad that this time you appreciate the use of colors i did in this shot. I totally agree with your considerations about photographic art, going beyond an actual representation is exactly what i'm trying to reach.
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Marco -very nice set, and I prefer the b/whites.
A couple of comments: don't you feel spooked working in these places? I would find it very difficult to stay there for more than five minutes on my own; with company it would be okay, but not alone. The problem is the mind - I think it would go into overdrive and I'm not sure I'd like that too much. How come no real estate developer has bought the lot and made a new fortune on top of the old fortune? This is the very time to buy - lowest prices and desperate craftsmen.
There's an old abandoned factory of some kind on the outskirts of my town - it would be great for pictures, but I simply can't make myself go into it. If I hadn't seen the Blair Witch Project perhaps it would be accessible, but the fear of dropping down through some rotted timbers or trapdoor into a processing well and being screened from mobile 'phone contact with any rescue is too much. The place was once used, many years ago, by a fashion team doing a shoot for a British catalogue company. They painted some old walls with ochre and stuff like that, and it worked, but that was a team...
Maybe Patricia will understand that there are some things you can face whilst there is the choice, but others are just too heavy to contemplate. This factory and your village are two such!
Rob C
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Marco -very nice set, and I prefer the b/whites.
A couple of comments: don't you feel spooked working in these places? I would find it very difficult to stay there for more than five minutes on my own; with company it would be okay, but not alone. The problem is the mind - I think it would go into overdrive and I'm not sure I'd like that too much. How come no real estate developer has bought the lot and made a new fortune on top of the old fortune? This is the very time to buy - lowest prices and desperate craftsmen.
There's an old abandoned factory of some kind on the outskirts of my town - it would be great for pictures, but I simply can't make myself go into it. If I hadn't seen the Blair Witch Project perhaps it would be accessible, but the fear of dropping down through some rotted timbers or trapdoor into a processing well and being screened from mobile 'phone contact with any rescue is too much. The place was once used, many years ago, by a fashion team doing a shoot for a British catalogue company. They painted some old walls with ochre and stuff like that, and it worked, but that was a team...
Maybe Patricia will understand that there are some things you can face whilst there is the choice, but others are just too heavy to contemplate. This factory and your village are two such!
Rob C
First of all, we were two (me taking pics and the other guy keeping ghosts away ;) ) and it was full daylight (I'd never go there alone in the night, like in BWP). Then, you're right, the place is kinda creepy but when you turn your eyes to the peaceful valley, the feeling changes and the mind gets serene again. My advice is to gather some friends, overcome your "bafflements" and take a trip to that factory (in the daylight, of course), I'm pretty sure you'll be back with good shots. Abandoned places usually are worthing some effort.
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I just want to mention the B&W shot of the tree again, because I think it's also quite good. The tree itself is an interesting shape in a beautiful setting and bathed in a remarkable quality of light which you captured perfectly. I'd happily put it on my wall.
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http://pisa.guidatoscana.it/en/provincia-pisa/cmsx.asp?IDPg=850 ( re: the murder of the beautiful Elvira )
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Marco,
This is a stunning set of photos, and a fantastic place to photograph. When I saw your portfolio, I started kicking myself because a few years ago I spent six weeks in Tuscany, a lot of it very near Toiano, but I never knew the place existed.
Thanks for sharing.
Eric
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When I saw your portfolio, I started kicking myself because a few years ago I spent six weeks in Tuscany, a lot of it very near Toiano, but I never knew the place existed.
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Eric,
It's time to return!
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I vote someone grabs Rob C and we all meet in Toiano for some evening and nocturnal shooting sometime this summer...if we find a let I'll do the cooking as long as someone keeps my glass topped...
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I vote someone grabs Rob C and we all meet in Toiano for some evening and nocturnal shooting sometime this summer...if we find a let I'll do the cooking as long as someone keeps my glass topped...
But Patricia, then who is going to do the photography?
Actually, it would be a nice idea to do something like that - certainly a change from eating in the same couple of bars every day of the week and finding it a big buzz when somebody changes the menu!
Rob C
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Rob, extraordinarily good food only takes moments when you source your ingredients locally...and did you see the glorious olives under which to spread a blanket to catch a snooze and rejuvenate for more time with the camera...evening hours are long, morning hours are long and would fly by all too quickly I think exploring the corners of this place...but still there must be good drink to keep the mind unhooked from our demands to allow the power of place to open new eyes....
This could be a very pleasurable photographic adventure with friends of open mind and spirit...
I note the huge funds people spend to go off to Antarctica and such, but something about this place makes me feel you could settle in and let it take hold with the offer of wonderful creative possibility...not a post card op...
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http://pisa.guidatoscana.it/en/provincia-pisa/cmsx.asp?IDPg=850 ( re: the murder of the beautiful Elvira )
Nobody can hear you scream in Toiano.
But you don't need shadows and night to get spooked. It can happen to you in brilliant sunshine the first time you walk into a house. Late friends of mine sold a very nice house here shortly after they built a huge pool for it, and bought another property on the side of a valley on the way to the sea. It was a very expensive place and consisted of two separate houses with a pool between the two buildings, just what you might imagine to be the perfect place for a retired couple with visiting adult families... my wife and I both got very bad vibes the first moment we stepped into the grounds to visit. It turned out that one of the couple's daughters felt exactly the same way on her first visit, too.
The owners never had much luck after they moved in: bad health and terminal illnesses. After the death of the second part of the couple I ended up doing the selling shots for the estate agent's brochure and that was a very weird feeling indeed. I was never so glad to get away from a place. Other than my first studio: it was in a very old listed building and I had the top floor except for the attic which was used by the owners of the building as a depository for their old business files. The attic was reached by an internal staircase which had solid sides and a heavy curtain at the base, which was in my studio's entance hallway. I hated having to work into the night there; I actually had my neck bristle every time I had to walk near the damn staircase, which was every night I was there because it was right next to the darkroom, the only reason for the late hours.
There are many things that you come across in life that defy rational explanation; the older I get the more I realise how little I know about what life really is all about. I was much more certain in my thirties. Especially about that staircase.
Rob C
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Ooh, Pat! That is so tempting.
Having been there (Tuscany, but not, alas, Toiano) in the spring, when the vineyards were just being planted for the season, I would now like to make my next visit in the fall. I was newly into digital photography on the last visit, and looking back over my shots from that trip now, I can see that I could do a much better job (photographically) the next time around.
As for food and wine, we did just fine last time, and could do even better the next time. Ah coniglio! Cinghiale! Truffle shavings on homemade pasta! All with a nice bottle of the house red!
And, Rob: Tuscany is so beautiful that there will be plenty of time to photograph during the five-minute breaks between meals.
And yes: I've now located Toiano on my map.
Eric
P.S. We can let Elvira do some of the cooking so Pat can have time to photograph, too.
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Rob, extraordinarily good food only takes moments when you source your ingredients locally...and did you see the glorious olives under which to spread a blanket to catch a snooze and rejuvenate for more time with the camera...evening hours are long, morning hours are long and would fly by all too quickly I think exploring the corners of this place...but still there must be good drink to keep the mind unhooked from our demands to allow the power of place to open new eyes....
This could be a very pleasurable photographic adventure with friends of open mind and spirit...
I note the huge funds people spend to go off to Antarctica and such, but something about this place makes me feel you could settle in and let it take hold with the offer of wonderful creative possibility...not a post card op...
And now you are into Omar Khayyám!
And you are also into perfect conditions. After two heart adventures and two stents, the limits of my intake are defined by a total ban on animal fat which removes from sight such delights as cream, wonderful cheeses (oooh that belle France!), pizzas of which my wife was a magical maker from basics, quiche - and imposes a maximum liquid intake of one glass of red wine a day and an official coffee. I cheat on the coffee.
All this with a guy who was never fat, smoked his last cigarette forty-four years ago (to add insult to injury, the cardios here still insist on describing me as an ex-smoker!). Its hill puts Toiano out of reach for a start: I can walk a couple of hours at a stretch and quite rapidly at that, and feel no ill effects nor particularly tired, but it has to be on the flat!
As is sometimes noted, youth is wasted on the young. And as Fred would probably agree: si jeunesse savait et vieillesse pouvait! Which about wraps up my available French.
Depressed? Moi?
Rob C
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But having said all that, I have no problem stretching out on a blanket as long as the ants, vipers and wolf spiders keep their distance. I can also enjoy that single glass as much as others the half-bottle (been there too often and know) and the more I think about it all - at least ten minutes now - the more I would feel inclined to sign on the dotted. It would make for an interesting drive across the south of France... yes, very appealing indeed! But I think I'd take the old car.
Rob C
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@RSL: I understand your point of view but comparing your modified photo and the original, there are some hues in the modified one not corresponding to reality; for instance, the altar is made of dazzling white marble (not yellow as in your pic), the same for the marble frame above the altar. The painting has subtle hues of red and orange (gone in your pic) that I tried to pull out. Your version has a yellow dominant not present in the actual scene. Usually, I enhance colors and hues (when i feel it could be good for the shot) but never change anything, especially colors.
The floor of the church actually was that blue? If the altar's too yellow after the one-touch color correction, a bit of desaturation with Viveza can correct it. Since I wasn't there, I don't know what the original colors were, but I can guess that the floor's not right -- at least as a representation of reality. On the other hand, as some have pointed out, in the end color balances are up to the photographer. Which is one reason B&W often is superior to color.
That's a great collection of pictures on your web, Marco, except where you've over-dramatized the sky. I hope you plan to go back for more.
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I don't know if it's superior, but it does look pretty darn good in B&W.
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I don't know if it's superior, but it does look pretty darn good in B&W.
It certainly does.
One thing that mars it as an image for me, though, is the black bar spanning the upper part of the arch. I'd remove it but I expect this comment will provoke howls of outrage!
Jeremy
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It certainly does.
One thing that mars it as an image for me, though, is the black bar spanning the upper part of the arch. I'd remove it but I expect this comment will provoke howls of outrage!
Jeremy
Jeremy, don't forget the walls of Jericho. Can't go messing with structures like that!
Rob C
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@popnfresh: I have a b/w version as well but the colors were so intense and peculiar that I didn't feel to left them out. Anyway, your b/w is quite impressive.
@Jeremy: you'd remove the black bar, someone asked me to remove the ladder, others don't like the armchair size but, as i said, I try to be respectful of original scene as much as i can, leaving things untouched even if, sometimes, as you, I don't like them.
@Russ: I'm sorry to repeat myself but I just enhanced actual colors. Believe it or not, the floor had a weird blueish hue, maybe due to the reflection of the blue painted wall above. Thanks for appreciating my pics on web; about over-dramatized skies, apparently we have a different point of view and I obviously respect yours.
@Rob: wise advice :D
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Jeremy, don't forget the walls of Jericho. Can't go messing with structures like that!
Oh, come now, Rob: I was thinking more of Samson. Have a little courage: you saw the bar away, take your shot and move like a bat out of hell before anything falls on you.
Jeremy
(and in case anyone takes that seriously, I was really thinking of PS)
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Oh, come now, Rob: I was thinking more of Samson. Have a little courage: you saw the bar away, take your shot and move like a bat out of hell before anything falls on you.
Jeremy
(and in case anyone takes that seriously, I was really thinking of PS)
Are you now thinking about Egyptian politics?
;-)
Rob C
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Are you now thinking about Egyptian politics?
;-)
Rob C
But, kidding aside, is anyone seriously thinking/interested in a LuLa trip to Italy at some time?
Rob C
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But, kidding aside, is anyone seriously thinking/interested in a LuLa trip to Italy at some time?
Rob C
A LuLa trip to Tuscany specifically would be awesome. I'd certainly consider it, but the timing would be crucial.
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A LuLa trip to Tuscany specifically would be awesome. I'd certainly consider it, but the timing would be crucial.
Umm - I'm not thinking in terms of an official workshop; I wouldn't go. I'm thinking just in terms of a bunch of people that gets on well on LuLa and seems to have shared interests. And especially somebody else that can cook!
Rob C
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I for one have already scratched a few forays off my possibility list for summer/fall2011 to make this a more likely reality...I've wanted for some time to check out the Estoril and Cascais area of Portugal (with possible relocation in the back of my mind)...
Most of my much loved family is happily transplanted to the UK, and keep encouraging me to do so... for me, I would like to try to see what that area has to offer me as far as being a home base in the future, so that I can either dig in further, or scratch it out of consideration...my thought then is to drive to Toiano, traveling extremely light, and just immerse myself in the area for a breath of fresh air in my diminishing timeline...To share the environs with a few like minded and light hearted spirits would be a real pleasure...Until last year when I treated myself to some personal downtime it was always on my Road King Classic, so limiting myself to a few changes of clothes, one camera body , and two pieces of good glass plus my tool kit was the extent of my packing...this past summer I spent as much time as possible either sailing or island camping, and the bike didn't make it out of the barn...I may have become self protective in that a fellow bike voyager was killed in a head on by a drunk driver last Spring...I'm finding myself wanting to be able to lug a tripod till the day I die...so the possibility of selling the bike to remove temptation is upon me...
I have come to completely disappear in ecstacy crawling around in a location for hour upon hour, both day and night...with the camera...I had lost my love of photography in trying to make the transition to digital...but at long last the digital thing isn't crushing me into the ground , and I've found myself free again to let the spirits take me where they may...
I'm open to this adventure, for the joy of friendship, an astounding locale, and moving outside the box I currently find myself inhabiting...Workshops format, stuffiness, attitude and unwillingness to go with serendipity aren't part of the picture I envision at the moment...so anyone serious?...count me in to the possibility pool!
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Portugal. I've worked there for Vogue; in Lisbon and down in the Algarve. It was a long time ago, and around Christmas/New Year and it rained like hell and was very cold. They have swung into and out of Communism and I still wouldn't invest a red cent there. Others do, and the real estate in the holiday areas is or was much higher in value than in much of Spain. If you golf expensive you'd love it. I don't, either way. Golf, I mean.
Italy appealed for a while, but the politics are rather doubtful there too and the red tape seems worse than in Spain. I wouldn't suggest an island anymore. Yes it keeps many out but it keeps others, like me, locked in. Ferries make spur of the moment ideas about the mainland or France anything but spur. They are expensive and not always at the most convenient times if you want to move beyond the terminals quickly on arrival, and for a good distance. And islands breed their own particular breed of politician too. This past year, most of Mallorca's ruling party has been pursued on corruption charges, and nobody seems remotely surprised. There are laws governing illegal lets of apartments and villas, but as most of the people running the town halls own such properties...
However, if you have the money for boats, the Balearics and Pitiusas provide beauty beyond dreams. But finding a berth is difficult. And dear because of it.
I sometimes think that those who live in their home town all their life end up having the best of it. They go from school into work and the network is all there, part of their lives from birth. Others, who move from place to place, do so because they chase dreams. But dreams end. Daylight shatters them and then it’s time to start looking around again, the history just keeps on repeating itself.
There are times when I look about me and wonder where the hell I am, and I’ve been here for almost thirty years now. I have concluded that travel is just another form of drug. You get that high as you do during a long shoot somewhere, and then you come down to a lower bottom than you had just left. I missed the photo trips like hell at first – probably still do – but I always felt that I was in some kind of unreal situation, even though it was, in fact, my working life for years, but it never felt it was based on anything solid. It all depended on a client’s whim, and how vulnerable a life do you want to lead? I suppose that travel has been indelibly associated in my mind with work, and even when we started to do it for pleasure (!?) and without work, I found myself obliged to pack all the stuff except the flashes. I used to tell myself it was going to be for stock, but it wasn’t really; I don’t know what it was for other than habit dying hard. Much the reason I still have cameras today, I guess. Like one of those dogs after Pavlov died.
I’ve had this idea that should I win the lottery (I did last week: got €9 and a few cents) properly, I’d set up the kids and their kids and then buy myself some exotic landyacht and go from European lux hotel to lux hotel until that got heavy. After that, I just have no plans; the trip would probably take me out, anyway. Always liked a lot of things I couldn’t normally afford, so why not indulge them? I’d have no wish to leave Europe. I’ve been to Africa, India, the far East and across the Atlantic and you can keep most of it, thanks. There’s enough in the old European civilization to keep me interested and moving… It would be lovely to be in the snow in some chic resort and not feel cold right now! Could handle that. I have a friend who twenty years ago told me that when a man tires of the Côte d’Azur he’s tired of life. Poor guy has five acres and a house to die for, a couple of Mercs, has sold his yacht and his hips have gone; has now discovered Parkinson's. It can suck, too, can life. I always did subscribe to the idea that a rich man’s death is a sadder one than a pauper’s: so much more to loose.
On that happy note, I’ll go switch on the electric blanket. I dread forgetting. I set the alarm clock!
Ciao (See? I'm almost there already!)
Rob C
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Over on Coffee I've posted an alternative/additional idea under LuLaFansTrip.
I don't want to mess with the Toiano concept, so in Coffee we can keep things in their separate boxes.
Rob C