People

Vigna Rondetto, Chiusa Pesio, Italy (Aug 20, 2006)

I am back. I spent last week in Seattle at the American Astronomical Society meeting. It was useful, as it is always an occasion for networking with colleagues, to establish new collaboration, further old ones or just to see friends that work in some other part of the country. Ah, yeah, some of the talks were also interesting...

Seattle seem to be a beautiful city to live (and the people are very nice and friendly). It was cold (much colder than Boston, which is unusual), and the last night it actually snowed. The next day was sunny and serene, and the view of the snow-capped mountains from the airport (and from the airplane) was quite amazing. I tried to take some pictures from the airplane, but unfortunately Mt. Ranier in all its glory was on the other side of the plane. Anyway I did take some image of the landscape on my side and if there is anything useful I will post it here someday.

Now I am back, busy as usual, with new deadlines looming at the horizon.

The photo is from this summer in Italy (to contrast with the cold night we are having in Boston - winter finally caught up with us). I was in the garden of my parents house taking pictures of my nieces and I inadvertently photographed myself reflected in the eyes of the little one, Letizia. I didn’t notice the reflection until I started to work on the digital negative... My wife says that when I do that (seeing myself in the eyes of the portraits I shoot) it is a little creepy. Is it?

San Bartolomeo, Italy (Aug 18, 2006)

This is my niece Alice on Piccola (or Pilla as she call her horse) with her father Giuseppe. Alice likes horses very much and she is lucky enough to live in a place, a small village on the italian Alps, where people can still raise animals. Alice started to ride since she was very little. As she was among horses since when she was a toddler (they have also a stallion called Nevado), she is completely at easy with these animals many times her size. The horses themselves sense her confidence, and probably also the fact that she is not an adult, because they are much more calm around her than with anybody else (except Giuseppe).

California (Nov 5, 2006)

Another photo of Southern California surfers. These two girls were sharing a single board, learning to surf under the vigilant supervision of their father on the beach. They actually spent most of their time in the water, but seemed to have a lot of fun anyway. They stayed alway close to the place where I was standing, where the waves were breaking on the surf, which worked well since I didn’t take my tele lens with me (silly me, but I wasn’t programming to take pictures of surfers). They were almost in the direction of the sun, which was reflecting quite nicely on their wet suits, making for an almost ideal backlight. The original photo is of course in color, but the contrast was so high that in’t much different from this B&W.