Italian Monochrome Monday

Italy has absolutely been one of the most beautiful places that I've been, even though we only got to go once. We spent quite a bit of time there though so that makes up for the fact that we were there only once. I guess I do also live in a beautiful area so I can't deny that, but there is something that gets you different when you are visiting a foreign land and how the beauty strikes you differently in those situations.

Because we've not been able to go outside a whole lot this past week or more with the temperatures being pretty fucking cold, I figured that I would dig into my picture archives to grab some older pictures and turn them into black and white. This was the latest batch of pictures flipped!

Vineyards and olive groves. Those are definitely some of the most famous icons of Italian food and culture. When we were there, we saw endless vineyards and olive groves no matter where we went! It was cool to see a new growth olive grove like this one, where the trees were still pretty young.

Would it be a post about Italy without a little bit of wine with it?! Lol definitely not! The amount of unbelievably delicious wine that we drank when we were there was unreal! We also were really lucky to have drank unsulfured wine for the first time which was incredible. The American rules really fuck things up by forcing the wineries to add sulfates to their damn wine. I'm going to look up one day why they do that shit, I guarantee it was for some health scare reason that may just be a load of bullshit.

The places that we visited had some really cool glasses and stuff! We sadly didn't grab any glasses when we were there but we did get some beautiful Italian wooden wine boxes, so I at least have that. I guess that lasts longer and is cooler than a wine glass in the long run, it has more utility!

This was a pretty cool shot to turn into black and white. Back when I was taking these pictures, I wasn't really thinking about framing a shot too much as I was just doing some point-and-shoot shit lol. I did end up getting some pretty cool shots like this one even though I had no idea what I was doing besides just taking a picture! Looking back, I would have loved to try and get things framed better or look better in some of the pictures but we deal with what we've got.

I was able to get some cool shots like this one too though! The Colosseum was one of the craziest and coolest places that I've been. The thing was enormous! To think that there were crazy amounts of battles and shit that went on here is pretty wild to think of. Also thinking of this happening well over 2,000 years ago is also nuts to think about the amount of people who walked up and down this street and outside the building here for that long. This version of human civilization (I know there were numerous other ones, but the "history" books won't talk about that) has existed for what seems like a really long time but in reality is just a small blip in the overarching timeline of human beings inhabiting and manipulating the planet. Being in Italy, one of the craziest things is to walk around so much vast history and discovery all over the place. Italy was quite literally the center of the ancient world for a while. I feel so lucky to have stepped foot on it and explored it years ago.

The Colosseum late at night, also turned into black and white was pretty damn cool. The shadows and grays all over the place make it look really spooky! I imagine that this was a pretty scary place to be for a number of years at night. Thinking back to the 1800's or something where electricity wasn't prevalent and things were lit up by torches and shit. This place would have been spooky as hell haha especially because it was ruins!