Photos from the Attic (ZS Planar 1.4/50)

[Orio]

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?

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

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.

[Minolfan]

Very nice pictures with a special sphere!

[Spotmatic]

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?

[poilu]

+1 time machine, very nice details captured!

[xjjohnno]

Excellent efforts there Orio.
Your attic looks like a retirement home for old Bialetta coffee pot, my favourite style of coffee pot.

[Jesito]

Nice shots, Orio. My favourite is the third one. Perfect atmosphere catch.
For you more than atmosphere, live memories...

Regards.
Jes.

[visualopsins]

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.

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



Asking price?

[Orio]

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.

[Katastrofo]

Beautiful captures, 2 and 4 are my faves, and the very last, the BW pic you didn't take.

[tanheis]

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

[tobbsman]

really nice topic ! like #2 a lot for it's artistic appearance.
And #3 which shows the power of that lens.

Cheers
Tobias

[LucisPictor]

Why haven't I commented?

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.

Impressive images, Orio.

[Orio]

thank you guys

[Kathmandu]

Thanks for sharing -
Your Attic series of pictures are very well framed ,simple yet classy. Bravo.


Cheers

[Orio]

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.

[mmelvis]

I really enjoy looking at the last picture. The angle with the bed in the corner bidding you fond farewell.

[Himself]

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?

[Orio]

@ 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").

[Kathmandu]

Perfect farewell- leaving lots of memories behind. I love how you've used the lighting.

[Katastrofo]

[Orio]

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.