Motion Picture AND Photoshop Frippery!

Back in the early days of this blog I wrote two posts: one was about movement in pictures - blurred edges instead of catching something in suspended animation; the other was about the fun you can have by fettling your pictures in Photoshop (or the like). I love experimenting with different effects on my camera or in Photoshop: I love taking the mediocre pictures and making them into something really special just by messing around with something as banal as the contrast.

When I went to the Belgian Grand Prix last year I took some bad pictures. Really bad pictures. I tried to capture the movement and failed. I tried to capture them in suspended animation and failed. My only option was to drag them all into Photoshop and try to bring about a miracle.

 This was one of my pictures. Poor colour, no real definition, not the kind of thing you'd really want to hang on your wall. Photoshop was my only solution to haul this poor piece of photography away from its gloomy fate in my recycle bin...

I'm pretty proud of the finished outcome, but then again I love pictures like this. I'm a big fan of pop art and bold blocks of colour: they really are the pictures I'd hang on my wall - in fact I just might get that one printed.

One of the photos I took when I was with my cousin in Formby was one of these awful washed-out images that wasn't really going to win any awards, or even just wall space. I introduced it to Photoshop.

It's not the best image I've ever come out with, but it's certainly better than the original. It's not destined for my wall, but I've maybe saved it from the recycle bin for the time being...

Road Trippin'

Formby, England, 2010

We Are Family!

Currently I've jumped in Padova, Gardaland, Trento, Venice, Bologna, Milan, Manchester, Verona, Switzerland, Lake Maggiore, Florence, Rome, St Andrews, at a boiled meat festival, and at a rice festival, to name but several...

Since I started jumping regularly (in 2008) it's been quite a whistle-stop tour, and that doesn't count all the times I visited places and just didn't get round to jumping. I've been a busy bee. Unfortunately, the life of a busy bee can sometimes be a little neglectful of the people who aren't on the same road as you. In fact it is extremely neglectful of the people that are equally as busy but are instead following their sat nav in a completely different direction - only rarely do your paths cross.

This is the situation with my cousin. We love spending time together, but we don't get to do it very often because we're both flying round the world and living hectic lives without trying to organise cross-country (as in nation and not the Cotswolds) meet-ups.

When, back in the summer of 2010, I returned home for a wedding, we took full advantage of being in the same place at the same time and went for a day out at the beach. It was great fun - we had loads to catch up on and for once the English sunshine rivalled the Italian variety I'd gotten used to (well nearly...).

In order to mark the day in a more special way, I wanted her to take a jumping photo for me.

This took some time.

But we got there in the end.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

Formby, England, 2010

Afternoon Tea

So after my attempt at cross-cultural relations, I caught the train to Padova to have afternoon tea with my friends. The dress-code was tennis whites, although they made an exception with my cream cricket jumper. My friends called it 'Afternoon Tea' but really it was a large bowl of Pimms and lots of cake to soak it all up.

There was an enormous victoria sponge on offer - each half was an entire cake (sometimes I love miscalculations); we had brought a plethora of freshly-baked scones; some of the other attendees (hailing from other European countries and America) had a go at bringing something relevant (with little success) and of course there was the Pimms punch (complete with cucumber).

It was a really British affair - well apart from the fact that we were sitting on a rooftop in Padova in 27 degree heat, legitimately wearing yah-ishly large sunglasses. It was what people in Britain wish would happen when they have their own afternoon tea parties.

The internationals present at the time were quite astounded with what we could achieve with some eggs, flour, [very expensive] butter [with rivets in the package - seriously what is with that, you could knock at least a Euro off the price if you took the rivets out]. Anyway, with the various ingredients and plenty of jam and cream we'd created a real English treat. The icing on the proverbial cake, however, was what the Italians gave us in return... Sunshine... Lovely.

And I know it's gonna be a lovely day!

Padova, Italy, 2010

Cross-Cultural Relations

Sometimes my life in Italy put me in a real quandry. I fell in love with Italy, the Italian culture, the Italian people, Italian coffee... That said, there were some occasions that above all I just wanted a cup of PG Tips with proper water; I craved roast dinners; I longed for Pimms...

I wished that I could find an appropriate hybrid with the best of British and the best of la dolce vita. Compromise was of course key, but I think I managed to get by quite happily. My parents sent me four boxes of PG Tips and I bought a funny Italian teapot; I turned my nose up at instant coffee and drank only the full-bodied Italian stuff (out of a Moka); I ate my pasta al dente; I showed my roommate how to make scones; I took a casual attitude to queueing; I watched Spooks and Never Mind the Buzzcocks of an evening; I got tanned; my blonde hair went blonder; I supported England in the World Cup; I supported Ferrari in the Formula 1; I drank Pimms in the afternoon and a Spritz at aperativo time. The Toyota Prius has nothing on me.

Anyway, this is all well and good, but I wanted to sum this up in a picture, and a jumping picture at that. I think I've managed it quite well: a cricket jumper and one of Italy's more ramshackled train stations...

Mind the Gap

Verona, Italy, 2010

Gardabubs

The 'Gardabubs' weekend came to me courtesy of the same group of friends with whom I shared the 'Super Happy Fun Day' in Venice. 'Gardabubs' was to be made up of two events - hence the composite word 'Gardabubs'. I shall deal with each separately:

Garda

The Garda of 'Gardabubs' refers to the day we were going to spend at 'Gardaland', a theme park on the southerly bank of Lake Garda. It's no Alton Towers, but it was certainly respectable and gave us a jolly fun day full of in-jokes and banter that I won't bore you with now.

Bubs

Now 'Bubs' refers to an event on the following day - when Michael Buble came to town. He was playing a gig at the Arena in Verona and a couple of my friends were going. I didn't want to spend 50Eur on a ticket because, let's face it, the Arena doesn't have a top so even if I was sitting at home in my apartment, I could still hear his dulcet tones drifting over.

The combination of these two magnificent events, however, meant that the only logical next step was to give the weekend a name, and this is where 'Gardabubs' came from.

To celebrate this, it only really makes sense to do one more thing: take a commemorative jumping photo:

Another summer day has come and gone away in Paris and Rome (and Gardaland)...

Gardaland, Lake Garda, Italy, 2010

Trenta Tre Trentini

My radio involvement was going nicely. I was properly established as part of the team and we were actually making some headway with the student body. Our plans were gradually getting more and more elaborate and after a version of CSI, a remake of the original Star Wars films, it only made sense that now we go for three Top Gear-inspired races across Bella Italia.

The first race pitted a lift against my legs and a flight of stairs; the second saw a three-way spat across Verona - who would win out of a runner, a bike, and a bus? The third race was going to have to be something special - it was going to have to take us outside the medieval walls of the city, but where?

We chose Trento.

We chose Trento because it took one hour on the train and one hour in the car - I genuinely didn't know who was going to win. I was on the train with one co-presenter, and the other had some merry men to deal with in the form of some other Erasmus students.

We raced. If you want to know who won, watch the video. But after all that, we were in Trento, an hour out of Verona and to be honest once we'd wandered round for a while, we all got bored. The only solution to our problems was first, to Grom, second to jump...

The Victory Jump

Trento, Italy, 2010

...and third, to go home.

Radio Gaga

You may have read that when I was in Verona I got involved with student radio. This was a lot of fun. We had a show aimed at other Erasmus students and we discussed everything foreign from habits to haute cuisine. It was actually quite a success. We'd get hundreds of downloads each week on our podcasts and we created quite a stir on the station.

Despite this the station was undergoing some changes in staffing and let's say they needed a kick up the bum in order to publicise their shows. we may have got 1,000 downloads for our podcast about Verona, but if there was one thing we could guarantee it was that the listeners weren't coming from the university. In fact they weren't aware the university had a radio station.

My co-presenters and I felt that we needed to change this and embarked on an ambitious campaign of printing tshirts and orgainising events for our fellow students. This was something we managed to do quite easily in the end and begged the question, why haven't we done this before? (Or rather why haven't they done this before).

So one evening we took our box of tshirts and went to the local pub (that was really the only 'pub' in Verona). We handed out our tshirts, did a spot of publicity, and tried to get the student population to listen to our show - this actually involved explaining to them what student radio was. It was a little hopeless really.

Still, what wasn't hopeless was the jumping picture we took to mark the occasion.

Lost in Translation, only on Fuori Aula Network

Verona, Italy, 2010