Seeing 2009 (#80)

Two offerings from an 2005 European bus-tour vacation taken with my then-fiancée Julianna and my parents . . . Spain, the Rivera and Italy. Quite an adventure . . . perhaps more on that in another post.

For quite some time I thought I'd irretrievably lost all of my images from this trip due to an external hard drive crash; nearly three years later I rediscovered the original CF cards and experienced the unspeakable delight to also learn that I'd not erased them, as I had thought.

The first is the side of a house in the lovely, soothing and serene village of Lucca, Italy; the arrangement of the windows immediately invoked some of Picasso's simpler depictions of faces.

The second image is one of a great deal of shots taken in Pompeii on a very hot day just past noon. I rarely take photographs under such generally flat light conditions. Nonetheless, on that particular day several scenes presented themselves as unusually abstract constructions, due to the sun's position nearly directly overhead. It was hot, extremely sunny, and Mt. Vesuvius loomed close by . . .

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Lucca House Façade (Ode to Picasso), #5412

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: July 6, 2005; Canon G2; f/5 @ 1/640 sec; -1/3 EV; ISO 50; 18.8mm.

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Pompeii, #5491

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: July 10, 2005; Canon G2; f/8 @ 1/250 sec; -1/3 EV; ISO 50; 14.6mm.

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