Sono uno studente di fotografia- I am one student of photography :)

So since I am here to be a student and not just a tourist, I thought I would update you all about my class that I have been taking the past few weeks. I know in one of my previous postings I somewhat mentioned it but I thought I would dig a little deeper to kill your curiosity.

The last two and a half weeks has been my experience in a travel photography class.  We have learned all of the basics including aperture, shutter speed and iso in addition so some other key "grammar" (in the photography language as my professor calls it) including composition, clarity, contrast etc.  I have really enjoyed taking this class because I have always had an interest in taking a photo class but it is usually one of the hardest to get into back home.  My professors name is Matteo Brogi and he is a self taught travel photographer.  He's 42 and married and was born and raised in Italy.  This last class he showed us some of his work and it was so impressive! Its amazing what you can capture through photos.  I cant say mine are quite up to speed with his but hopefully someday! :)  I have class everyday from 3-5:30pm.  Normally I would think that a two and a half hour class would creep by but this one goes quite fast and is fun to learn in.  A typical class is comprised of viewing each students photos for the assignment given and hearing critiques from our professor.  Its fun to see how different people view the landscape and tourism thats around us everyday in Florence. Some of the girls (its all girls) in my class are really talented!

Me and my professor, Matteo! :)

Reviewing our midterm photos

Today we were given an assignment to photograph people so after class got out I wandered the city over by the Arno river to do so.  After getting some gelato, I tried to apply the skills that I have learned thus far in class.  I was practicing "panning"for a long while before I got a few good shots that I was satisfied with.  Panning is when you follow a moving object with your camera using a long shutter speed to blur everything in the background and catch the object that is moving in perfect still form.  I was practicing this when a old Italian man came up to me and started speaking to me in Italian.  I at first was nervous and thought I wasnt going to be able to comprehend anything but once I really tried, I actually understood a lot! It was exciting! What wasn't the most exciting was that I realized he was asking me to meet him for gelato after my class tomorrow. Haha this Italian man was actually asking me on a date?! Not only was there a language barrier but a serious age barrier.  I told him that it was nice to meet him and that I had to go (of course taking his photo before I left).  Silly old man...

One of my favorite panning shots!

"The" little old man

I wandered around a bit more taking some other photos of people, trying not to look like a creep while doing so, when I heard some drums and trumpets playing on a street ahead of me.  I ran up to see what was going on and saw that it was a parade.  All of the men were wearing medieval costumes and tossing Florentine flags into the air! It was so awesome, and perfect for photos of people for travel photography. I watched the parade and snapped some pictures while realizing that the parade was also full of hot men! There is a world water polo competition going on this week in Florence along with some other sporting events and so there were teams from the US, Italy, Australia, China and more.

I followed the parade into Piazza Uffizi where it ended and the ceremony took place.  There they played each of the countries National Anthems.  I sang along to our National Anthem with some other American girls from Florida that I met and made friends with.  The girls and I could not stop talking about how amazing the men looked in tights haha which I never thought I would say, let alone think.  One of them we could not take our eyes off of! He had some serious Pauly D hair that he needed to wack off but those legs... let me tell you!! They looked like a Michael Angelo statue haha. While we were standing there we met some Italian boys that were volunteering and maintaining the crowd.  We chatted as much as we could and asked them if we could have "special" shirts just like theirs.  They were such typical cute Italians named Luca, Giovanni and Claudio.  Giovanni was my favorite but the most shy.  It was fun to meet Italian boys that were our age.

Afterwards, my friend from class Anna and I headed back towards my street where we meet my roommates for Chinese food.  After the bad experience my family had a few years ago with Chinese in Mexico I was skeptical, but this Chinese was amazing! We wiped our plates clean and are now back home with food comas living La Bella Vita! :D

Ciao! xoxox