to catch the sun
Now I don’t know for sure that the resident up there on the second floor hung out the laundry when they did in order to get a shaft on sunlight on it while it dried. All I know for sure is that when I saw it hanging there above my head, the sun was shining on the clean clothes and was not shining on much else.
I have to say that my town seems really boring after experiencing the vibrant life on Palermo’s narrow streets. The dullness of it makes me miss Sicily. It makes me miss Sicily quite a bit.
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 9.3.2022
Sicilian cherub
We stepped into this church to look around, but there was so much going on that it was hard to really see anything. And harder still to get photographs that conveyed the Baroque details, the Catholic imagery, the oldness of it all.
But there WAS a particular cherub that I liked.
Chiesa dell’Immacolata Concezione
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 9.3.2022
cathedral boys, playing with confetti
The church in Ragusa Ibla – the Duomo di San Giorgio – is stunning. Look it up; you’ll see what I mean. It’s on a lot of Sicilian tourism brochures.
In a stunning departure from what my previous photographic self would have done, instead of making a bunch of photos of the building, I spent my time watching these two kids playing in drifts of left-over confetti on the church steps. And photographing them, hoping to catch just the right moment with them and their game.
And, also, how about that one kid’s fedora?
Ragusa Ibla, Sicily
photographed 9.7.2022
this light is a gift from far away
Our roving band of photographers spent a long time one afternoon at the Palermo harbor photographing four or five people who were fishing. They didn’t seem to mind that we were back there, working all the things (light! framing! angles! exposure!) that photographers like to mess around with. In fact, at one point, they even showed us the white bucket that held their catch and we had a nice conversation with them (even though they didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Italian).
We’d actually gone to the harbor in hopes of getting some glorious sunset photos; when it became apparent that wasn’t going to work out, we turned our focus (so to speak) elsewhere. And that’s a good lesson: even if the thing you thought you were going to photograph doesn’t work out, something else will show up to fill the void. And honestly, this photo is way better than anything sunset-related would have been.
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 8.30.2022
behold the man
In addition to seeing a lot of wall-mounted shrines in Palermo (as I mentioned yesterday) I spotted some larger ones as well, like this one on the side of Chiesa di Sant’Antonio Abate. Walking around Palermo was a visual delight – there was something interesting/new/photo-worthy at every turn. If I’d stopped to think about it, it would have been overwhelming. Instead I just kept looking, kept shooting, kept immersing myself in everything the city and its residents had to offer.
As I write this, I’ve been home for eight days; I’m still writing in my travel journal every day because so many things happened on the trip that I couldn’t get it all written down in real time. That journal started out real organized, with things documented chronologically. It quickly descended in chaos, which I tell myself will make it more interesting for future reader(s) who will be treated (if that’s the right term?) to a stream-of-consciousness telling of Important Things I Just Remembered.
Palermo, Sicily
photographed 8.31.2022
One Day | One Image 