Well, it wasn't Rome, but close enough. I was fortunate to travel with my dear friend Lori of Experience Italy in April to the region of Bologna where we visited the visually inviting cities of Ferrara, Modena, and Parma. Smaller cities suit me just fine as I'm not one for huge touristy crowds. (Sorry Rome.) If you want to know anything about Italy, these folks at Experience Italy know their stuff! With over twenty years of contacts, research, and experiences they can confirm anything and anywhere for your trip through any of the beautiful regions this country has to offer.

The Italian food (think parmesan, prosciutto, and the best balsamic vinegar in the world), wine, art and architecture pulled me in so many photographing directions that my eyes were more exhausted from all the imagery than my legs were from all the walking!

We traveled on through all sorts of medieval structures and pathways. Once I'm done editing the rest of my images, I'll upload a complete gallery of the best of the images from the trip to share on my Facebook page. For right now, I have more images than I dare to post so I'll just show you a few more of my favorites, edited to create something unique from my thumbs.

The town of Ferrara is know for its Castello Estense, a moated medieval castle in the center of town. As we were walking around, this guy really caught my eye. He is Girolamo Savonarola, an Italian Dominican friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. I love the emotion captured by the sculptor. But the lines going through the image and the coloring seemed a little off from the display of passion in his posture. With a little help from the Snapseep App on my iPad I was able to create more drama and "spot heal" the lines out of the image. I then took it one step further, converting the image to B&W with a grainy texture. (Which do you like better, the color or B&W? It's all so subjective you know.)

Architecture is always one of my favorite subjects to photograph when I travel and I'm always looking to shoot from different perspectives and edit in creative ways.

One of my favorite stops was at the Pavarotti Museum. He was not only know for his amazing operatic talents but was also quite the painter. His home is very bright, airy, and joyful place filled with creativity, collections and opportunity for photo-journal compositions. These images were taken with my iPad and, again, I applied the Snapseed app to increase ambience, texture, vibrancy and depth. I like to use the Blur feature when I want to emphasize one part of an image like the dachshund in the line of coffee mugs.

The Ferrari Museum presented pretty wild architecture and was exciting to see. I especially liked the vintage collection of cars, many of them used in American films. For the cafe building image, I hit the HDR feature in the Snapseed app and increased saturation a bit to really snap the shot. You have to go big when working with Ferrari, right?

At the end of our week we traveled to Florence. Our hotel was magically located across from the Ferragamo Building and one bridge over from the Ponte Vecchio. The Ponte Vecchio is a Medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge over the Arno River, in Florence, Italy, noted for still having shops built along it. It is probably the most popular spot in Florence to see. This image was edited using the Snapseed HDR filter and then playing more with the tuning.

Most of you that know me, know that I am easily distracted by all things around me visually calling for a shot. Random street scenes are always fun and really add personality to your travels.

You can find more images from this trip on my Facebook page. Be sure to LIKE the Thumb Print Images page and invite your friends to like it as well!

Join me in a class to learn more. They fill up fast since space is limited so if you have a small group of 4-6 people and want to schedule something separately around the Sacramento area, just let me know!

Wishing you beautiful images from great moments in time,

Ciao! Cynthia