Home

Please support mflenses.com if you need any graphic related work order it from us, click on above banner to order!
SearchSearch MemberlistMemberlist RegisterRegister ProfileProfile Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages Log inLog in

Photos from the Attic (ZS Planar 1.4/50)
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Oversized Gallery
View previous topic :: View next topic  


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 12:16 am    Post subject: Photos from the Attic (ZS Planar 1.4/50) Reply with quote
Today, I went to the house of my late aunt Maria (sister of my father), a house which I own now for 1/3rd, in order to take photos of it and try to sell it. By the way: anybody interested in buying a house in Northern Italy? Wink

So like I said I went there - I did not know the house very well, had been there only a few times previously when I was a child. The house was built by my grandfather early in the 20th century, in the 1910s or early 1920s.
After the war, the surviving children of my grandfather (my father, two borthers and one sister) one by one left the house to live on their own, except my aunt Maria who stayed there all the time; from 1920 when she was born, until 2009 when she died, she inhabited only this very one house.

The house is now pretty much of a mess, after the vegetables shop that Maria and her brothers (except my father) used to have, closed, she only lived in a few rooms, and my father started to use the other rooms as a storage place for the furniture and paintings he did buy here and there to resell.
Maria was a very traditional woman, not keen at all on any kind of technology, so the house stayed pretty much as a pre-war house would be. Except for some floors re-done, you could really think the house did come from the past: old furniture, old family photos on the walls, very old tools like for instance a wheat sieve, old irons for clothes, bed warmers, all this kind of stuff mixed with the occasional old technology items like an old TV, old fan, etc.
Really, really strange feeling there. Except for the few tech things, I really felt like being in the early 1900s

Well, after having taken the "duty photos", to document the rooms from all angles, the views etc., in the last minutes I did take some fun photos for myself, mostly up in the attic, which was an incredible source of photographic inspiration - and would be a terrific set for portraits, provided that I could convince one of today's models to mess with the spiderwebs and dust and old junk Laughing

So, here's some of the photos I did take there for my own pleasure. All these were taken with the ZS Planar 1.4/50 - it is the M42 version of the lens - mounted on the 5D, which now, after the CLA, focuses with absolute precision and has become again a real pleasure for me to use:

01.



02.



03.



04.



05.



06.



07.


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 7:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Very nice pictures with a special sphere!


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Very nice series! It's like a time machine. I'd like to see more of the house (also from the outside).

The picture on the wall, is that your aunt?


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
+1 time machine, very nice details captured!


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Excellent efforts there Orio.
Your attic looks like a retirement home for old Bialetta coffee pot, my favourite style of coffee pot.


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 12:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nice shots, Orio. My favourite is the third one. Perfect atmosphere catch.
For you more than atmosphere, live memories...

Regards.
Jes.


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
2 special romantic, the color light from the (oil?) lamp shades, loosed onto those walls must be a sight. Warm like rust.

3 Fabulous personal collection of well used common objects, of many only those remaining intact, all worn so beautiful, each the work of Art.

5 Lens, light, photographer. Wink

7 Fine, fine old straight-grain wood, of magnificent growth, exceeding rare today, warm. Vivacious!



Asking price?


PostPosted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 4:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you guys for the kind words! I am happy with this series.
And very happy about the ZS Planar, I think it really gave a fantastic performance, it gave me exactly the kind of look that I was after.
The lighting in the attic was perfect, #3 turned out exactly like I wanted it to be, with a narrow range of muted pastel tones and a super emphasis on the "3D" effect.

Spotmatic wrote:
Very nice series! It's like a time machine. I'd like to see more of the house (also from the outside).


I will show more of the house. I have already made the interior pics. I still have to photograph the outside.

Spotmatic wrote:
The picture on the wall, is that your aunt?


Yes, she's an aunt of mine, but she's not Maria. The one in the photo died tragically young, not sure if during the war or even in the 1930s, I have to ask my cousins for more information, I don't even know her name. Embarassed

Here's Maria in an old photo, the boy on her side is my father - yes, I know there's not much similarity with me, sometimes I used to kid my mom by asking her if I am the son of the plumber Laughing
(I am actually almost a clone of my great-grandfather on mother's side).



PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Beautiful captures, 2 and 4 are my faves, and the very last, the BW pic you didn't take. Wink Smile


PostPosted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 6:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Very nice photos and I love all old and historic things.
Those old B&W photos look nice and I have always liked how ladies
looked that time and how they look in those B&W photos Smile


PostPosted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 9:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
really nice topic ! like #2 a lot for it's artistic appearance.
And #3 which shows the power of that lens.

Cheers
Tobias


PostPosted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 2:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Why haven't I commented? Question

Those are shots I really like. An attic often offers amazing subjects, esp. if the house is pretty old.
Unfortunately, I have missed to shoot the attic of my grandparents' house before it was sold. Sad

Impressive images, Orio.


PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 12:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
thank you guys

Spotmatic wrote:
I'd like to see more of the house (also from the outside).


here's the photos.

30. Distagon 3.5/15 Contax
This is the house from the outside front, on the street. My father's family house is the half on the left, it's the original house.
My grandfather built it, presumably some time in the 1910s
the other half was added much later and does not belong to my family:




34. Planar 1.4/85 Rollei
A detail of the front side, with the decorations and the iron balaustrades (all original):




31. Distagon 3.5/15 Contax
The side, which faces on the church's yard:




32. Distagon 3.5/15 Contax
The side, closer view.
Note that on this side, all the windows, except for the squarish one in the middle, are fake (painted in trompe l'oeil style):




35. Planar 1.4/85 Rollei
Detail of the painted windows:




36. Planar 1.4/85 Rollei
Detail of the painted windows:




37. Planar 1.4/85 Rollei
Detail of the painted windows. Note that the squarish real window was created at a later time than the house;
you can in fact see that it cut through the painting of the fake window, same as the one at it's side:



The one thing that hits me most, is the cure and sensibility for the aesthetics and the beautiful, that people did have in the past when building houses.
The walls at the attic level are all decorated; the walls are not flat, but relieves are created by 3-dimensional use of bricks,
creating a whole architectural dimension to the flat surface, with low-relief simulations of columns and vaults.
Even more striking is the fact that these were not rich times; in fact, they were a lot harder times than today. But this did not prevent people who build a house
to consider the aesthetical values and to invest in it, even if the money could have been certainly saved for more practical uses.
Today this sensibility is completely lost: people build houses with only the practical use and the maximum saving of costs in mind.
As a result, we are more and more surrounded by the ugliness.

Later I will post some photos of the interiors.

now a little "time machine" comparison. note the part of the following image that I encircled in red.
You can see the same part in the photo after, that was taken some 72-74 years before mine. The little boy in the photo is my father:





My grandfather had a vegetables and fruit shop. You can see the cassettes of fruits covered with a white cloth to avoid them being ruined by the sun.
No glass windows at the shop, they were luxury items. My guess is that what is at the wall is a piece of a wooden panel to close the shop.
I don't have a larger image to check if the iron fence is the same or was changed. It looks like it could be the same.
The brick wall surely looks the same.
Next time I will take a closer photo, from the same point of view as the 1930s image.


PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thanks for sharing -
Your Attic series of pictures are very well framed ,simple yet classy. Bravo.


Cheers


PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
thanks Kathmandu
Well, I see that the house photos are not interesting, but I promised to complete them, so here they are.
All the photos taken with the Distagon 15mm, except for the fresco paintings details which are ZS Planar 1.4/50mm:

first floor (I didn't photograph the ground floor as it was mostly the shop and it's a nonsense mess now):









Attic:



This room of the attic was decorated by my father when he was a young student of the academy of arts, at the age of 14 or 15, so around 1942-1943.
He made a modern-day and ironical mockery of the grotesque style. I am astonished at the masterful painting hand he used to have even in such a young age.
Since his family was quite crowded at the time, I think it's possible that this attic room used to be his sleeping room for a while.
Needless to say, I found this possibility quite moving. I mean to know that for a time this could have been his own place as a young boy, where he slept and dreamed about his future...
I will never know if this hypothesis is true or not. There is nobody left to give me the answer. Now it's only dust and spiderwebs, and the light-touched but relentless hand of time upon everything there:








Other attic rooms:






This little time travel is completed. The camera is back in the bag. I now let these rooms fall back into their silence of oblivion.


PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I really enjoy looking at the last picture. The angle with the bed in the corner bidding you fond farewell.


PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Huge house, impressive I may say.
I like the tiles from this second set.
I'm talking about picture #2,3,4. The other ones try to imitate the pattern. Even the wall paper resembles the tiles pattern.
They seem to be the original ones. Am I right?
Ceramic or wood?


PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
@ Melvis: I'm happy that you read the last image as such. That was my feeling also and this is why I put it at the end of the series.

@ Sorin: those tiles (ceramic) have been put there in recent times. Originally the whole house must have had the cooked clay floor that you see in the attic rooms (we call that type of floor "cotto", it used to be the poor people floor in the past, today is much searched after, it gets always recovered from demolished houses, and resold at insane prices for the villas of the rich who want to recreate an "old country style").


PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Perfect farewell- leaving lots of memories behind. I love how you've used the lighting. Very Happy


PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 5:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Kathmandu wrote:
I love how you've used the lighting. Very Happy
\

+1, just love this last set of interiors. I feel like I'm in base camp looking
up at the summit where these reside, and a multi-pitch climb it is. Yes,
the lighting, like you've bent the sun to do your will, an inspiration as
always, Orio! Love the house, BTW.

I'll go back to sweeping the floor, Mr. Wizard! Smile


PostPosted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 8:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you guys. I can claim no merit for the lighting, it was there, I picked it up.
Same for the magic of the place, it looks like a film set, that was set ready for me. If I only had the money, I would keep it and use it as my photographic studio.
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Oversized Gallery
Page 1 of 1