A day in Naples

flysurfer

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Since I had the opportunity to spend a day in Naples and vicinity, I decided to bring along my cheap and trusted Fuji HS20EXR in order to take a few casual snaps. No need to worry much about thieves, as the camera is available for around EUR 250, capping my potential losses.

Since Southern Italy is pretty worn out and chaotic (just like me, so I love it), I decided on a faded and nostalgic look, mirroring the ever-present decay of my surroundings. I used the OOC JPEGs, optimized them in iPhoto, used Topaz Infocus and Denoise for noise suppression and converted the files to black&white with Flare, a cheap Macintosh app with plenty of possibilities. It's currently available in the Mac App Store for less than USD 10. A real bargain, and very easy to use. I created my own duotone preset for this series.

Here's a view over the coastline taken from Vesuvio, the still active local volcano:

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Ercolano was buried under hot lava almost two thousand years ago. Today, the restored ruins look nicer than some of the current homes located above the digging site:

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Strolling through Ercolano, you can buy fresh fruits, vegetables, cheese, fish and meat at bargain prices:

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and so you should be ... but then as we all know, it's not about the camera ... os you should be pleased with you own performance.
there's too much to comment on here -- too many good things I mean -- but I will say I love the treatment of the first image, it works really well ; I love the fish-head; the market images are wonderful and draw me into the scenes with a lovely sniff of nostalgic memory for other places; and the "ivory -ish" treatment of the last few images lift them beautifully.
 
I absolutey am stunned by your stance and presentation.
That 1st image, I'd love to buy a print from you.
It is a masterpiece......

Thank you, I'm glad you like it. :)
If you want to, you can happily make your own prints. I have just uploaded the original as a 6 MP JPEG file. Feel free to contact me if you want the access URL.
 
What a beautiful series! I'm a sucker for this kind of processing and it fits the subjects so fine. Many beautiful images; I would single out the first and the one of a corner market, where those two street meet. Great!
 
Beautiful duotones, flysurfer. Your first makes me feel as though I'm looking at a photograph from around the 1940s and even though I wasn't alive then I get a real feeling of nostalgia. As Paul/pdh said - there's so much to comment upon in these. The black sands and the water are beautiful, as are the interiors, the "two lane" road...and I do love the fish head on the beach.

I'll put in my encouragement to give us some direct links to Flickr so we can see them even larger.;)

P.S. Another wonderful calendar - you really do your books and calendars with very good design style.
 
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