Wouldn’t that be wonderful?:

Doesn’t this kind of look like the world you’d create if you made Florence into a video game?:

Though it is no less gorgeous:

Awesome is not a word I use often because I feel it is a bit retro, a bit overused and a bit trite.  There is only one case where I think it is called for and it is when talking about a place called Italy.  Then I’d pull out all the stops and use the cheesiest language, because the place goes beyond the word awesome.

Also a word on these photos appearing now.  Yes I went to Italy in September and it is now March and I keep cranking these things out.  Well, there are three reasons.  Reason number one is that this computer occasionally makes a fist and punches me in the face because there are too many photos on the hard drive.  I took about 1500 photos of Italy, I’d estimate.  Reason number two was that my internet coverage in Italy, I recall was the opposite of awesome, so there wasn’t tons of time to upload photos.  Reason number three is that I can’t figure out what to do with these photos for a while and by that I mean how much industrial light and magic to really use on them, so they sit and sit and sit until I have some kind of lightening bolt.  Or I am stuck on a bus somewhere with nothing to do.  Which ever comes first.

Enough chatter.  Let’s begin our wandering:

This lady has no bad angles and is a real classic beauty:

Italy is unrelenting and it does not let you go:

If you need someone to assist you with shooting those Ralph Lauren campaigns, I am available.  Check out my audition photo:

Not a huge fan of impressionism (truly, I really only love Magritte) but I guess I went for some impressionism here:

Sometimes walking up to a person and taking their photo, something I do on a rather regular basis, doesn’t scare me.  Sometimes I am convinced someone is going to snatch the camera out of my hand and smash it to pieces.  When the second scenario occurs I pretend to fiddle around the camera and hope the sound of where ever I am drowns out the sound of the shutter clicking.

Here we have an example of scenario #2:

It looks a bit incidental because that is exactly what it is.

I was just there to photograph it: