Friday, July 29, 2005

All Roads


    Hand of Constantine
    taken with Diana Camera

Sorry for the lack of updates but I have been on a couple of trips back to back and then haven't been doing much scanning / blogging this summer. The first trip was more of a camping trip with some rockclimbing thrown in and the second was a trip to Italy, kind of short but excellent. So, bear with me as I will probably draw out these images over the next couple of weeks. I did have a toy camera peculiar malady infect one of my Diana cameras. A light leak happened in a camera that previously had been light tight. So, I lost a number of images to a strangely shaped distraction but such is life with plastic cameras I guess. Most of the film was alright actually though as I had a second Diana with me. I am not believing this is terribly interesting but am just rationalizing to myself how I have so few worthy images after visiting such an amazing place.

Which reminds me of another trip, many years back where I shot up a lot of film and the images, while technically okay, were not very lively. I have started to believe that taking pictures as a tourist is a pretty challenging proposition. The severe gravitation of 'postcard' vistas coupled with the shallow comprehension of life's energies in a strange environment, I believe, set up the photographer to make ordinary photos. I would love to go back though without feeling the compulsion to walk ten miles a day to see as much as I could. And there appear to be a few good images from what I can see so far.

So, this image is the one that I actually looked forward to making. I am not sure why but having seen this statue in other pictures - one from Ralph Gibson maybe? - I have always thought Rome would be a truly awesome place with stuff like this strewn about. And it is. This was seen in the Palazzo dei Conservatori.