Knurdle Of Locks

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As I ran through the sidewalk tunnel on the right in this image I noticed something odd. At first I was preoccupied in trying to get the shot of the bridge. But then, I walked back to the tunnel entrance to examine the handrails more closely. And as you can see in the picture above, there were glowing pods in the doorway. See them? Looking closer, here’s what I saw.

Odd? Bizarre?

“What the hell?” I muttered and a voice from behind me said, “You don’t know do you?”

She was smiling at me: A gorgeous blonde in a running suit.

“Um, I’ve got no idea.”

“There’s a legend. No one’s sure where or quite when it started,” she said pleasantly in a New Jersey twang.

“And it involves these locks?”

“Uh-huh,” she fingered the set, testing them, clinking them together. “There are those who believe that if you leave behind a lock that sometime in your life you will return to Florence to unfasten it.”

“There are so many who believe it?”

“More than you can imagine. I saw the police on Friday morning cutting these banisters free.”

“Wow, it’s Sunday morning you mean?”

“Yeah,” she jangled the one cluster and nodded to a larger bunch on the companion railing to her right.” These are from the rest of Friday and yesterday. They grow like barnacles, there are signs all over the city banning them… it drives the cops nuts,” she dropped the locks and started to jog through the tunnel.

“Thanks for the explanation. Um, what part of Jersey you from?”

“Jersey?” She laughed, her voice echoing in the tunnel, “Never been to the States. I’m a Swede.”

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Note to follow the Mano A Mano series


As many of you may recall I visited Italy during the first two weeks of October staying the first week in Rome and then for a week in Florence where I met up with Andreas Manessinger for a Mano-A-Mano photo-shoot at sunrise on October 7 starting at the famed Duomo and working our way toward this astonishing Ponte Vecchio bridge (yes I know that is redundant). You can begin this Italian adventure chronologically by clicking here and working your way quickly forward. Of course your thoughts and feelings mean a whole lot so feel free to wade in at any or every point.

Or if you prefer click on the appropriate keywords at the bottom of this page. Clicking on Mano-A-Mano will bring you to the images in the series I did with Andreas which I've so far posted. Enjoy....And For a review of my Florence images click here.

Florence 15 • Ponte Vecchio 1

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The Medici family, the richest people on earth at the time were the massive drivers behind Rennaisance Florence. Here I finally approach the wonderful Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge. Turn right at this corner and you cross that span. Go through the walkway-tunnel and your arrive at the Uffizi Gallery. As I've mentioned before, it's now home to one of the world's greatest collections of art. But it was originally one of two the most massive Medicci palaces. The other, the Pitti Palace was on the other side of the Arno River and the Ponte Vecchio was built to join the two.

I arrived at this corner early on October 7 as the sun peeked over a crack of the Uffizi you can see on the left. This was the morning when Andreas Manessinger and I were into our Mano-A-Mano shoot and here I had to make a decision. Go right and onto the Ponte Vecchio, go through the tunnel in front of us here and go up river to capture the bridge looking east with the sun at my back, or go backward and capture the grand structure shadowed in the rising sun. Since I arrived the evening before, I'd never been in this place before and the sun was rising rapidly. What to do? Could I possibly match Andreas's expertise and experience with this site? Hmmm: At least I'd arrived first, he was nowhere to be seen.....

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As many of you may recall I visited Italy during the first two weeks of October staying the first week in Rome and then for a week in Florence where I met up with Andreas Manessinger for a Mano-A-Mano photoshoot at sunrise on October 7 starting at the famed Duomo and working our way toward the astonishing Ponte Vecchio bridge (yes I know that is redundant). You can begin this Italian adventure chronologically by clicking here and working your way quickly forward. Of course your thoughts and feelings mean a whole lot so feel free to wade in at any or every point.

Or if you prefer click on the appropriate keywords below. Clicking on Mano-A-Mano will bring you to my images from the series I did with Andreas which I've so far posted. Enjoy....

Florence 12 • Duomo 2• Tunnel Morning

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Sprinkled about the Renaissance City of Florence are tunneled sidewalks. As I'm facing into this one, the Duomo's piazza is to my right and behind me. This is attached to a building at one end and the pathway will eventually lead through streets down to the Arno River. This is a public way. Look at the grandeur. Even in the first lights of morning it hints at the depths of the artistic wealth of this city. How many of us take a walk like this to the office, eh?

Incidentally, this is part of my Mano-A-Mano shoot with Andreas. What's that, look below.

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As many of you may recall I visited Italy during the first two weeks of October staying the first week in Rome and then for a week in Florence where I met up with Andreas Manessinger for a Mano-A-Mano photoshoot at sunrise on October 7 starting at the famed Duomo and working our way toward the astonishing Ponte Vecchio bridge (yes I know that is redundant). You can begin this Italian adventure chronologically by clicking here and working your way quickly forward. Of course your thoughts and feelings mean a whole lot so feel free to wade in at any or every point.

Or if you prefer click on the appropriate keywords below. Clicking on Mano-A-Mano will bring you to my images from the series I did with Andreas which I've so far posted. Enjoy....

2007 Award Winner: Florence 11: Sunrise Melody

Note: Accepted as one of the finest Travel Images of 2007 for Canon POTN Book to be published in the Fall of 2008.

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Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote that to take photographs is, "to find the structure of the world – to revel in the pure pleasure of form, and to disclose that in all this chaos, there is order."

Which I suppose is why we hunt the radiant vista?

Of course Cartier-Bresson would have dismissed this image out of hand since he thought that color was the provence of the painter and that the photographer must only investigate a monochrome world. Pity, while he may have grasped the words about sunrise over the Arno River in Florence – he'd have missed the melody.

Florence 10: What's The Opposite Of Twilight

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See how the minutes before dawn are where history’s attic lives?

It’s when you find the boundaries between what has happened and what will.

While the normal person isn’t entirely aware of all of life’s sub themes and boundaries:
• it’s a specific human quirk
• to imagine mystery
• into that crack between night and morning.

See how it’s an instant when you can feel Florence’s memories

• either come out or scurry away.


By the way, we call the sweet light between day and night, twilight. What do we call the sweet light between night and day? Anyone know?

Florence8: Duomo 1

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Did you ever wonder would happen if time was tidal?

I wondered that as I worked on this image. Does it show?

Here's the first of my contributions to the Duomo series that Andreas and I worked upon on the morning of October 7 as the sun slowly formed over Florence.

Florence 5: Andreas And The Duomo

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Pisa, Sienna, Rome, & Florence seemed to quite hate one another throughout the history of the Italian states. They were rivals both on the battlefields and in their architecture with each vying to build the grandest cathedral, or duomo. By the mid 1200s, Sienna and Pisa had won - a fact that grated at the increasingly prosperous Florence. It motivated them to replace their crumbling nine hundred year old church of Santa Reparata with what for centuries was to become the grandest cathedral ever seen - the Basillica di Santa Maria del Flore: Il Duomo. Designed in 1296 the last touches to its facade were completed in 1897 - some six hundred years later! Its massive shape, capped by the largest masonry dome ever constructed, looms over Florence.

While Andreas Manessinger had visited Florence before this morning of October 7 it was my first full day in the city. As you may recall, we agreed to meet at Il Duomo for a picture shoot at dawn. Beginning there, we then decided to work our way down some five blocks to the Uffizi Gallery and to the wonderful Ponte Vecchio bridge which sits just beyond it. As you can see, Andreas works with a tripod while I prefer handheld shooting. Consequently I tend to move much more swiftly and travelled through the ancient streets ahead of my friend.

BTW: See those doors to the left of Andreas in the lower picture? Those are the famed Gates Of Paradise entry to the Duomo's baptistry which were originally made from gold in 1440 by Lorenzo Ghiberti..

Florence 4: “LOOK! Look there. See?”

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Photography has a unique power in its ability to point. Some even say that it’s what photographers in snapshots, advertising, photojournalism, wedding, fashion – even fine art photography – in its every use they say it is what we do best. The lens has the ability to focus attention upon a child’s giggle, the tear of a bride’s mother, blood on the sidewalk, or a vivid personal idea about how sunrise coats a great river like The Arno as it wends through Florence.

“See that?” The picture asks? And we not only see it, but through the mind and feelings of the guy or gal who pulled the trigger.

And when we realize that it’s part of the role of photographers to point, we begin to understand that it is also our right.

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I'm in an odd mood this Thanksgiving Day. I'm lost for the right word. Sometime yesterday afternoon my stomach went crampy from the visit of a virus. So after a sleepless night, I'm taking calmatives and listening to Barbara Carroll albums. Under those dual influences plus this holiday reverie - Lancaster seems both connected to everything, and adrift on its own. Is there a word for that? The morning on the Arno a few weeks ago seems like this morning. I can hear a bicycle's bell and quiet scooters. Oddly, the Arno, just below my camera, flowed silent between the walls that hold back its capricious floods.

YAWN! It's a good evening to meditate on things that make both Rita and I thankful. Happy Thanksgiving world.

This Place Looks Like This

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Hey! Here's a fast postcard to all of you from Firenze, Italy in the pre-dawn of this AM.

Wish you were here...


Ted

This image is posted from our apartments in Florence on the evening of my Mano-A-Mano photo shoot with Andreas Manessinger. I've only quickly had time to look at the four gigs of shots I took at the Duomo and then down the ancient streets to the Ponte Vecchio at sunrise this morning. I'll probably not get back to these for weeks. But it looks as if I have an image or two that are competitive.



This is the 365th posting to ImageFiction!!!! So? Is this really the first anniversary, or just an indication that I needed a day off here and there over the past year? Hmmmm.....