Posts Tagged “Italy”

I got the film back from Italy and fell in love with the grain all over again. I think it happens every time I get back a batch of vacation film, see also here. Can your digital camera do this?

Yes, I know the highlights are blown out and the shadows are gone. I’m not interested in perfection, I’m interested in art, in chemistry, in magic. Can any digital camera do this?

Full disclosure: Tri-X negative scanned to hi-res JPG then cropped and level-corrected, but just a tiny bit. Sure, you probably can get that from a digital photo with more manipulation, and sure, you can see the artifacts along with the grain. But just you wait ’till I scan some of those negatives to uncompressed formats…

Clockwise from top left: olive, tomato, mushroom, liver, lard. Delicious with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Dusk over the Arno. Everybody else is shooting the other way towards the Ponte Vecchio but the light is gone and the bridge is too far away. Always know the time of sunrise and sunset and if possible the phase and times of the moon, too.

I am not making this up. According to the guidebook…

Ferrara’s interesting foods with unusual histories:
…
The Bread (Ciupeta) In the 16th century, the Dukes of Ferrara led a luxurious court life. The Dukes’ cook served for the first time a kind of twisted bread, the birth of “Ciupeta”, whose shape is a combination of male & female sexual symbols.

I will say that the bread was rather flavorless, unsalted bread being typical of this part of Italy, and that the cappellacci were far more sensually inspiring.

Archduke Max built it on the Adriatic then went to Mexico and got killed by Juarez. His wife Charlotte of Belgium painted pined and went mad. Gotta love the XIX century.