Thoughts on this 2020
Probably the (distant) future reader must be aware that 2020 was a year of big challenges. I’d like to write this post without mentioning the great threat of this year, history books will!
#bestnine is a hashtag from the Instagram community used when someone posts an image built with an online tool that selects the 9 most liked photos of a profile and creates a collage that should sum up a year of photos.
I’ve generated my own best nine collage but, as usual, I think that it doesn’t sum up my year very well because the most liked photos are not necessarily my (personal) favorites.
I chose my favorite photos, let’s start in chronological order!
Pale di San Martino
The Pala group (Pale di San Martino) is a mountain range in the Dolomites, in the eastern Trentino and part of the province of Belluno (Veneto). I’ve started my year here, from this heaven on heart! Last year (2019) I promised myself to go to the mountains more often, and so I tried to do! Here Alice and I enjoyed a beautiful view and some time to recharge for the new year to come.
White Swan
Whenever Alice changes her hairstyle I love to photograph her with my little mirrorless camera. I gave the caption “White Swan” to this photo because it was the first metaphor I thought looking at it: the swan has always been considered a symbol of beauty and elegance, but also of eternal love.
Fun fact: the swan is said to have only one partner throughout its life and to be faithful until death
Little Big Italy
Whenever we can, we love to discover new places by flying around the world, but sometimes we underestimate the beauty that is close to home. This year’s events prevented us from flying out of Italy, but they also allowed us to discover new and fantastic places in our beautiful country. The call of the sea in summer is irresistible to us, and so this summer we visited Capo Vaticano: a wide bathing place in the Municipality of Ricadi in Calabria. For Alice this destination was already known from her childhood, so we decided to relive it together and we concluded that we had the best holiday ever!
A very vulcanic year
The Capo Vaticano lighthouse stands on a high cliff, from which it is possible to admire one of the most famous volcanoes of the Tyrrhenian Sea: Stromboli! In this shot, it seems that the volcano is “eating” the setting sun. It was a magical and inspiring moment. You can also see some smoke coming out of the main chimney, which is considered by sailors as a sign of good weather and luck.
The secret place
The rocky shores of the “Costa degli Dei” are full of coves with small secret beaches inside, so small that they can only be reached by swimming or with a small boat without an engine. The one in the photo was without people inside and allowed us to hide from the people that crowded the main beaches, it was a truly romantic moment. We left a piece of our hearts here.
Cooking, what a passion
Like every year, I can’t help but experiment in the kitchen. The inability to move around except for work reasons gave me many opportunities to cook some meals that were tasty and a little more elaborate than usual, without big claims.
A quiet place
Here we are back in the mountains! This is the “Altopiano dei Sette Comuni”: it means “seven towns plateau” that formed a Cimbrian enclave in the Veneto region. The most important comune is the city of Asiago, which gave its name to the cheese of the same name (really tasty!). We took advantage of a day off to escape the city and take refuge in this peaceful place.
Silhouette
We captured ourselves as a solid shape of black color, with a featureless interior, and the sun setting in the background. This picture is like an oxymoron, an antiphrasis of our feelings: even when we feel emptied inside by the adversities of life, we are always together, in an eternal kiss that nothing and no one can ever break. The sun sets behind us, a metaphor that everything passes and that tomorrow we can start over with a new dawn.
Little one
Sometimes Joe, our half-breed dog, gets frightened by some loud noise or because he just barked at some other big dog he had no way of overwhelming! But he knows that we are always close by, ready to reassure him, making him happy and ready to explore the city. It was him and our walks that have reminded us of what is normality, the simplicity of the routine, in a not very normal year.
How was your #bestnine?
A new year has begun, but last year’s challenges are still there asking us to pay the bill. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and set about reconstruction! We must get back together to build a better future for us all.
As usual, I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone happy holidays and a better new year!
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