Italy Part 6

On our second day in Florence we had a half bus half walk tour.  We started out by going to Michelangelo Square.  You get an incredible view of Florence from this point.  There is also a fake David statue hear.  After seeing the real David the fake David is pretty offensive.  There was a lot going on in this square.  There were street vendors like in any other part of Italy.  There was a guitar player jamming for money.  We also saw a wedding party walk around and take pictures.  I took pictures of them with the zoom zoom(Julia's name for it) lens.  I felt like a creep taking the pictures, but they looked very nice.  This was one of my favorite parts of Florence.  These pictures give you an idea of the views and the happenings in the area.  

After the square we got on the bus and rode back to the main part of Florence.  We were dropped off and the rest of the tour was walking.  We eventually left the group because we felt like we could see more things on our own.  We did see some interesting things before we left them.  

We had lunch near the Duomo and decided to go to the top of the Dome.  If you are willing to climb the 463 stairs to get to the top you will enjoy a marvelous view.  I do not have pictures of the steps going up, because I was concentrating on not falling.  The stairs were a tight fit, and spiraled.  There was also a portion of steps that were inclined significantly.  Once we got to the top, it was well worth it.  Julia did not accept the excellence of the view do to our distance from the ground.  

We did a lot of resting after the dome tower.  The plan was to take a trip to Pisa the next day.  We took the Italian equivalent of the commuter rail to get there.  It took one hour to get there.  We spent half the day there, and had lunch in a fly infested restaurant.  That was not much fun.  We made it to the leaning tower after lunch and walked around the area.  There were a lot of vendors in this area.  A bike fair was also going on for kids, and there was flea market type festival going on as well.  Pisa was very busy that day.  

We had one last night in Florence and we walked around after dinner.  There was a spot that had some cut outs of people and we took some pictures there.  I also took some pictures of the streets and the hotel.  

 

That is it for Florence.  Florence was my favorite place that we visited in Italy.  We got ourselves packed for our trip to Venice the rest of the night.  I think there is 1 more post left form the trip, so if you're not sick of them you have one more post to look forward to. 

Allie and Francesco

I had the pleasure of taking pictures of Allie and Francis today.  If it needs to be defined as something, I will define it as "pseudo engagement" pictures.  Most of you know Francis as Susi, and if you know Susi you know he has the Jaw line of a Greek God.  We were testing the waters.  I was seeing what I liked with input from the boss.  We all threw out ideas and I think I took a decent amount of good pictures.  We learned things, so it was well worth the time.  While you're taking the pictures you concentrate so much on what settings you want that you don't notice something may be off with you subjects.  This was only part one, so we'll use what we learned for next time. 
The first picture would have been a nice shot if I positioned them closer.  A simple move closer together would have made the picture better 10 fold.  After looking at the picture again I noticed that you can't really see the important part of the ring either.  See you look and look and learn. 

The next two pictures work in my eyes.  They both have a casual feel to them.  I think the hardest thing I've encountered is making people look comfortable in formal pictures.

The next couple of pictures are some more on the steps.  I am a big fan of the second picture.  They both look very happy, and I like the background as well.

These next pictures are at a different spot on the same staircase.  I like the background of trees and bushes.  I think it provides a nice back drop.

We tried to take some pictures of them walking down a pathway.  This did not work out as well as we hoped, but I think the next picture managed to make the attempt pointless.

We moved on to different spot and took a couple of pictures in front of a bush with reddish flowers.

The next set of pictures were taken of them sitting on a stone ledge near a lot of shrubbery, and flowers.  We moved around and changed up the way they were set up.

We moved once again, and tried something a little different.  We got some good shots of them dancing between rows of vines.

The last set of pictures are on a stairwell near some more shrubbery and plants that provided a nice back drop for these pictures.

That's all she wrote.  We are going for round two this coming Saturday.  I enjoyed myself today, and learned a little bit of what works and does not work.  I hope you enjoyed these pictures even though they broke the Italy streak we had going.