Roberto Ballerini - traveling's blog/

I decided to show you unprocessed shots: I'm too lazy to process them all and I'm trying to have a more direct approach to photography. From now on, my travel to Tuscany will come to you straight from the camera. I feel a little bit as "naked" showing you how many shots I fail, but I think this is also an instructive activity to look at how an amateur like me tries to document his experiences. All comments and critiques are welcome, as always.

We arrived in Massa Marittima in the evening of April 30th, after five hours of travel (Senigallia, Foligno, Perugia, Siena, Massa Marittima) to avoid motion sickness to our children.

It was our 13th wedding anniversary and our host, Ilaria, is one of our wedding witnesses.

I never went to Massa Marittima before and the first image I saw was the Cathedral place:

MG 1901

MG 1902

MG 1903

I've seen a lot of Italian towns, but Massa is a very peculiar one: as I said before, the church isn't aligned with the main street (as you can see from the third shot). The building on the right is the Palazzo del Podestà, from the Medieval Communes Age (XIII century).

Ilaria lives in a old flat she restructured and you can see the travertin ruins of the foundations of a medieval church incapsulated inside her walls:

MG 1905

I was so fascinated by the vision I had arriving and the next morning I woke up before my family and I went wandering through Massa, with Ilaria as guide:

• through the alleys

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• the Cathedral

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• details of the Cathedral

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• details of Palazzo del Vescovo

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• Palazzo del Podestà

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• Palazzo del Comune

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MG 1924

     

• Cathedral seen from the Fonte dell'Abbondanza (with painting representing San Bernardino da Siena, a Massa native)

 

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• Fonte dell'Abbondanza

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• one of the City Gates

MG 1953

• alleys

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• another of the City Gates

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• Torre del Candeliere (and the bridge joining it to the Senese Defensive Walls, a miracle of engineering)

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• insiede a City Gate

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MG 1969

• Defensive Walls (10 seconds of difference between the shots, but the bikers I captured in the first shot makes the difference)

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MG 1971

• view of the country form Seminario Vescovile

MG 1973

• Seminario Vescovile

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MG 1975

About photography: as you can see I prefer to shot in B/W when I'm not in full light, I usually bracket and slowly change my point of view.