Every picture is a memory. Every time we press the shutter on the camera we are freezing a moment of history so we can preserve it forever. It sounds monumentous doesn't it, but it's not: Facebook will certainly tell you otherwise. I log on each day to see the myriad of photos that my so-called 'friends' vomit onto my homepage. Not only do people upload a sequence of the same picture - I have two of them so why not use them - but the other people in the picture will also post their versions of it. The result? Monster albums clogging up the internet providing the CIA with plenty of material should anyone need blackmailing in the future...


It is an age-old question, though. How do we make our holiday photos interesting to the general public? How do we step away from the necessity to have 'been there' to really appreciate someone else's pictures? And, while we're at it, how can we remove this insane fashion for de-tagging and portraying this hideously false image on Facebook? There is no hard and fast solution - no tried and tested method to solve this, but I think I may have hit upon a compromise.


May I invite you to read on...

Monday, 23 January 2012

Roma, Città Aperta

So by now, I'm in Italy: 6 weeks and counting and I've seen a whole host of places. I'm getting on really well with the guys and girls on my language course, but the big cherry on top of the cake was missing. Rome. The capital city. The (if you'll pardon a religious pun) Holy Grail of Italian tourism.

The second weekend of our course was a Saturday trip to Rome: I could hardly wait. We boarded the coach bright and very early that morning and when we arrived in the capital, quite frankly it couldn't have been hotter. We poured out of the coach at the Vatican and immediately joined the queue for St Peter's Basilica.

After queuing for a large part of my life in the queue and visiting the basilica we were whisked away to the Pope's crib, Pantheon and then the Fontana dei Trevi, made famous by Anita Ekberg when she has a wee dance in it during Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

By that time it was lunchtime and the list of things to see was still extensive including sights like the Spanish steps, the Typewriter, and the Colosseum. I wasn't going anywhere near a tube that day because it would be so hot that I would probably die, then melt, and then my parents would have nothing to bury.

We decided to walk it. We made it, and only when this list was complete at the Colosseum that I thought it would be appropriate to do a little victory jump.

Friends, Romans, Jumping Men
Rome, July, 2009

Rome truly is an open city - open to anything, even crazy jumping girls with outrageous t-shirts and surf shorts...

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,
Location: Rome, Italy

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)