Bish Bosh Bashy
Cortona above the clouds - Tuscany
This was a lucky shot taken with a genuine Italian antique compact pocket plate box camera I fleeced off some Sicilian peasant on Ebay for a couple of billion lira. We ambled out of the maze of sky-bound Cortona's narrow medieval streets heading back to the car, along with this slightly conspicuous swelling bursting from my right trouser pocket, unaware that the cloud base had rolled in from neighbouring Umbria like this. Five minutes later and it was pretty much dark. As I unfolded my genuine Italian antique compact pocket plate box camera, lit the fuse to the flash lamp, and prepared to take this picture I remember saying out loud "Please don't let me screw this one up".
What you can't see is my not so happy wife dangling off the branch, eight feet up in the air right behind me, duped, albeit under inventively profane protest, into helping me to bring the greenery down into play at the top of this image. A moment after taking this three hundred and eighty fifth shot here, the branches suddenly disappeared from the view finder with a thrash, as my wife's grip finally gave out and she plunged unceremoniously earthward once again. I didn't dare laugh. Well not until I'd put a good half mile distance between her and me through the back streets of the town anyway.
Depending on which article you read, Cortona sits on its hillside at an altitude of between 1200 and 1900 feet. It has been stated that a chap called Crano - a descendant of Noah himself - came to this hillside around 273 years after the Great Flood and built the town of Cortona, which is officially older than Rome itself. It is also alleged that Noah himself spent some thirty years here roughly 165 years before Crano arrived. No really! I'm not making this up!! More recently it was the location for the film 'Under the Tuscan Sun'. Highly recommended for an out of season visit, especially towards the end of the autumnal season, when the temperature drops, which in turn increases the chances of providing the perfect weather conditions instrumental to a magical Tuscan cloud carpet scene such as this.
"Altamente raccomandato!"
Cortona above the clouds - Tuscany
This was a lucky shot taken with a genuine Italian antique compact pocket plate box camera I fleeced off some Sicilian peasant on Ebay for a couple of billion lira. We ambled out of the maze of sky-bound Cortona's narrow medieval streets heading back to the car, along with this slightly conspicuous swelling bursting from my right trouser pocket, unaware that the cloud base had rolled in from neighbouring Umbria like this. Five minutes later and it was pretty much dark. As I unfolded my genuine Italian antique compact pocket plate box camera, lit the fuse to the flash lamp, and prepared to take this picture I remember saying out loud "Please don't let me screw this one up".
What you can't see is my not so happy wife dangling off the branch, eight feet up in the air right behind me, duped, albeit under inventively profane protest, into helping me to bring the greenery down into play at the top of this image. A moment after taking this three hundred and eighty fifth shot here, the branches suddenly disappeared from the view finder with a thrash, as my wife's grip finally gave out and she plunged unceremoniously earthward once again. I didn't dare laugh. Well not until I'd put a good half mile distance between her and me through the back streets of the town anyway.
Depending on which article you read, Cortona sits on its hillside at an altitude of between 1200 and 1900 feet. It has been stated that a chap called Crano - a descendant of Noah himself - came to this hillside around 273 years after the Great Flood and built the town of Cortona, which is officially older than Rome itself. It is also alleged that Noah himself spent some thirty years here roughly 165 years before Crano arrived. No really! I'm not making this up!! More recently it was the location for the film 'Under the Tuscan Sun'. Highly recommended for an out of season visit, especially towards the end of the autumnal season, when the temperature drops, which in turn increases the chances of providing the perfect weather conditions instrumental to a magical Tuscan cloud carpet scene such as this.
"Altamente raccomandato!"