↑Roberto Ballerini (temporarily offline: time for life ;-) )'s blog

Four days in Tuscany, too many for two 2GB cards. I had to use my A600 and to save the 350D shots only as RAW (and convert it back to JPG... many many hours) and to delete many many shots and to buy another 1GB card.

I will show you what I remember of those marvelous places, but I don't want to deceive again Pippina (we haven't met, even if I was 30 kms from her, because when I managed to organize a trip to her home she fell ill). So I start with the first image I found in front of my eyes when I finally arrived to Massa Marittima: the 13th century Cathedral of St. Cerbone

Springtime feelings 31902 Mass…

 This is the second of over 1000 shots I had to convert this night (AWWWWWN!!!)

Some processed shots from Massa Marittima:

Tuscany 31903 Massa Marittima,…

The Cathedral isn't aligned with the main street

Tuscany 31909 Massa Marittima,…

After a night shot, a daily view

Tuscany 31921 Massa Marittima,…

A detail of the Palazzo del Podestà: the Siena shield (White and black) and the Massa Marittima shield (on the right). The façade is full of the family shields of the Podestà families (Podestà was the supreme authority of the city)

Tuscany 31923 Massa Marittima,…

The City Hall

Tuscany 31925 Massa Marittima,…

Palazzo del Podestà: here you can see all the other shields

I decided to show you unprocessed shots: I'm too lazy to process them all and I'm trying to have a more direct approach to photography. From now on, my travel to Tuscany will come to you straight from the camera. I feel a little bit as "naked" showing you how many shots I fail, but I think this is also an instructive activity to look at how an amateur like me tries to document his experiences. All comments and critiques are welcome, as always.

We arrived in Massa Marittima in the evening of April 30th, after five hours of travel (Senigallia, Foligno, Perugia, Siena, Massa Marittima) to avoid motion sickness to our children.

It was our 13th wedding anniversary and our host, Ilaria, is one of our wedding witnesses.

I never went to Massa Marittima before and the first image I saw was the Cathedral place:

MG 1901

MG 1902

MG 1903

I've seen a lot of Italian towns, but Massa is a very peculiar one: as I said before, the church isn't aligned with the main street (as you can see from the third shot). The building on the right is the Palazzo del Podestà, from the Medieval Communes Age (XIII century).

Ilaria lives in a old flat she restructured and you can see the travertin ruins of the foundations of a medieval church incapsulated inside her walls:

MG 1905

I was so fascinated by the vision I had arriving and the next morning I woke up before my family and I went wandering through Massa, with Ilaria as guide:

• through the alleys

MG 1906

MG 1907

MG 1908

• the Cathedral

MG 1909

MG 1910

MG 1911

MG 1912

• details of the Cathedral

MG 1913

MG 1914

MG 1916

MG 1919

MG 1934

MG 1930

MG 1931

MG 1926

MG 1927

• details of Palazzo del Vescovo

MG 1917

MG 1932

MG 1935

MG 1936

MG 1937

MG 1928

• Palazzo del Podestà

MG 1925

MG 1921

• Palazzo del Comune

MG 1922

MG 1923

MG 1924

• Cathedral seen from the Fonte dell'Abbondanza (with painting representing San Bernardino da Siena, a Massa native)

MG 1938

MG 1939

MG 1940

MG 1941

MG 1943

MG 1944

MG 1945

MG 1947

• Fonte dell'Abbondanza

MG 1949

MG 1950

MG 1951

MG 1952

• one of the City Gates

MG 1953

• alleys

MG 1954

MG 1955

MG 1956

MG 1957

MG 1958

• another of the City Gates

MG 1959

MG 1960

MG 1962

• Torre del Candeliere (and the bridge joining it to the Senese Defensive Walls, a miracle of engineering)

MG 1961

MG 1963

MG 1964

MG 1965

MG 1966

MG 1967

• insiede a City Gate

MG 1968

MG 1969

• Defensive Walls (10 seconds of difference between the shots, but the bikers I captured in the first shot makes the difference)

MG 1970

MG 1971

• view of the country form Seminario Vescovile

MG 1973

• Seminario Vescovile

MG 1974

MG 1975

About photography: as you can see I prefer to shot in B/W when I'm not in full light, I usually bracket and slowly change my point of view.

After the tour in Massa Marittima documented in my previous post, I had another little tour with my family, with a visit to the Archeologic Museum, documented in this album.

After that we decided to have the traditional 1st of May picnic in Valpiana, near Massa Marittima, where the catering was organized by CGIL, the main Italian Trade Union.

In the afternoon we went near Siena to visit the Montesiepi Hermitage and the San Galgano Abbey.  These places have a legendary history: Galgano, a former violent knight, met two times Michael Archangel, who brought him to the Montesiepi Hermitage. Unable to find some wood to make a cross, Galgano planted his sword in the stone, where you can see it. The similarity with the Chrétien de Troyes cycle of King Arthur and the Round Table Knights is amazing. You can find more about the legend here and about the places here.

This is the current state of the Hermitage and of the Sword:

In my opinion the more interesting photographic subject are the San Galgano Abbey Ruins, down the Montesiepi Hill:

You can find a lot of pics about these locations inside this album.

After that we returned to Massa Marittima to visit the Carapax Center, a very important European Center for the defense of the Turtles, where you can find also lots of Storks, but it was too late: the Turtles were sleeping and I took only some shots: www.ipernity.com/doc/robertoballerini/album/64638

Then we returned to Massa Marittima, to make a little tour of the Città Nuova (New City), the oldest part of the town (don't ask me why the oldest is called new and the newest is called old...), avery interesting location for pics in the setting sun.

More shots in this album.

The next day I had another occasion to wander by myself in Massa.

•  Cathedral

It was earlier in the morning and with a better light:

• Torre del candeliere

• pluuuuuumaaaage!

We decided to visit the WWF Oasis of Orbetello. When we were there, we discovered the oasis closed the previous day, so we went to the Patanella wood on the Orbetello lagoon:

•  view on the lagoon

• fern and cork

In the afternoon we visited Capalbio and Niki de St. Phalle's Giardino dei Tarocchi (Tarots Garden):

• Capalbio

• Giardino dei Tarocchi

Returning just in time for another marvelous sunset:

Albums:

• Massa Marittima
• Orbetello
• Capalbio
• Giardino dei Tarocchi
• Massa Marittima

... an amazing milestone...

Following day we returned to the Carapax. I never saw so many turtles form all over the world and all the stork nests:

• the greater turtle species of the world:

• Miccio Amiatino, one of the species with a cross on the shoulders

• Storks

After dining in Follonica, we went to Populonia; instead of visiting the Etruscan necropolis, we decided to wander trhough the wood to a promontory in front of the Elba Island; inside the wood you can see many entrances to the Dromos, the Etruscan graves cut inside the rock:

• Entrance to a Dromos

• the Gulf (with a pebble launched by Anna Chiara...)

• Elba Island

• Waiting for the sunset

We returned to mass just in time for another sunset:

Related albums:

• Centro Carapax
• Populonia
• Massa Marittima

Another great artist on Ipernity!

Is a GreaseMonkey Script I translated from Flickr to Ipernity.

Today I release version 0.6; this is a fast patch, waiting for the API version to come; let me know if you find bugs.

ADDED: support for the 'blog' size (seems to be available only for your own shots) and for the new file names

REMOVED: (temporarily) blind effect

CHANGELOG:

version 0.5, with groups support.

Thanks Jean-Michel for the news...

Yes! I'm completely gone!