Crawling

Night Vision

Tivoli by night

Shadows in the pine forest

Steak House Parking

Nocturnal

Entrez

Austria - Texas: Football Night

On a dark winter night, when you're driving back from one of the many thermal baths scattered around south Styria and your passengers on the backseats are listening to a Spanish broadcast of El Classico, the last thing you would expect to come across is a giant neon football built along a country road. For a moment again, the sensation of being not in Mitteleuropa, but somewhere else, very far from here, passes through my mind.

Time to go home

I don't remember having ever been on top of the Schlossberg night time. I must have seen a couple of sunset from there, may e more, but I've always watched the Uhrturm, the bell tower illuminated and standing against the dark sky from below. Eventually, yesterday I went up for a dinner with colleagues at the restaurant on top of the hill and on the way back I could enjoy a nice walk along the endless staircase that begins nearby the tower.

Late Shift

Somewhere ...

... I can't remember in the city center of Graz.

(Made and sent from my mobile)

Feste di Piazza

Not far from the city center, opposite to the river banks, the so called MariaHilferPlatz is enlightened as never before. The big wheel turns without people. They are all below, drinking their mulled wine.

(Made and sent from my mobile)

International Earth & Sky Photo Contest 2014

The World At Night

I'm not used (at least in recent times) to post pictures not mine. Nevertheless from time to time it happens to find out there, on the web some very good food for thoughts or for inspiration. This collection of photographs is taken from The World At Night, "an international effort to present stunning night-scape photos and time-lapse videos of the world’s landmarks against celestial attractions". Nearly ten minutes well spent.

A Sanctuary

It doesn't happen so often to get out night time when I'm home. The night of the local primary school Xmas recital is an exception and it's great to see some corner of the town I'm living in with the same "eye" that I use to have when I'm business travelling. In some extent feels like the town got a little bit more yours than ever.

From day to night

Archive images from my latest trip to Budapest.

Oil Station

Oil is not for free. How much oil, I wonder, is necessary to light up a refueling station as if it was on a sunny day? Would one or two customers per night pay back for the oil? Oil for oil for oil.

I'm alone, here, with no one to share these spikes of my mind. I'd better not attempting to make (and answer) questions like this and carry on with the night walk.

The night hunter is back

Oh, how nice and exciting is walking around the street of a foreign town, walking aimlessly and feeling free to throw your glance at the upper floors of the apartments and concealing in the shadow of a street corner, as you wait for your prey to get close enough for a snapshot. The corner of a side street in the old district of Haga, in Goteborg, is by far the safest place in the World for such a practice.

I had to wait a while before findng my hunting spot: in winter time, at ten in the evening, streets are already desert, empty spaces, good for your mind waves and experimentation.  Yet, to make it interesting, you have to find someone in the right place, in the right moment, with the right attitude.

In Haga's winter evenings, those few people that you come across look like moving from nowhere to some nowhere else. They appear just behind a bend and quickly vanishes few steps past your shoulders, after casting a rapid glance at your silhouette. After one, two or a few more passers-by, you start whishing you could capture a picture of one of these ghosts, So you sit or lean to a wall and act as you were distractled by the buttons of your gears.

Better times ahead

After three days of meetings, presentations and discussions with Italian and Swedish colleagues - in a couple of cases carried on till past our dinner time in our hotel lobby -, I've managed to find half an hour for a lone walk along the river banks. Full of excitement for such an unexpected opportunity, I've gone out of my room soon after dropping my backpack and taken the shortest path behind the city Opera House, where the "living", en-plein-air naval museum is located.

The thin cover of fresh snow that I found on my arrival, last Sunday evening, has surprisingly melt down. Wind is even more surprisingly absent. Walking is therefore a real pleasure and I've made my tour with fingers crossed, wishing that the batteries of my camera wouldn't leave me unable to shoot: a good shot is always told to be behind the corner. So, wishing for better times and opportunities (not necessarily from the photo-amateur point of view), I've walked aimlessly through grounded boats, anchors and chains, with my mind left free to any kind of wave could ever pass by.

Those boats are parts of the glorious ships exposed along the banks and still able to float and do their valuable job. I stopped a while, while taking some pictures and thought of myself. I should have sat for a while on that bench and listened at their advices for these moments of indecision of mine.

Night Photography

Colors & Water

As 591 opened a call for a new collective exhibition about "night photography", I went looking into my hard-disk for some good ol' pictures to send. Without going too far in time, I came accross these (surprisingly) color pictures that I took in Stockholm and Goteborg a couple of years ago. Just after loading them together into the blog editing page where I'm currently writing in, I realized that they all have two great elements in common: colors & water.

I must admit that keeping faithful to Black & White is sometime very hard. These pictures are the clear evidence. When sunlight is missing and we rely of artificial lights (unless we're walking close to an erupting vulcan, a big fire burning or under the sky vault brightened by an aurora borealis), colors come to our aid to better yield the sense of depth and the slightly perceptible variations of water in the air. Water, on the other hand, creates that magical framework of reflections that puzzles our minds and keep us a little bit more on the picture.