May 28 // 6:41AM
Todi // Umbria, Italy
I went out for an early morning walk to make a few images while staying in the Umbria region of Italy. The wind blew the grasses on the hilltops as the sun bathed everything in the first hours of the day. The medieval town of Todi sits on the distant hilltop and gazes at it’s communities in all directions.
Italy has a way of forcing you to pay attention to it’s romance and it’s unrelenting beauty. The countryside makes you forget about the hustle and bustle of Rome, the crowded streets of Venice, and the hours of travel it took you to arrive at the place where you stand. Surrounded by olive trees and hilltops, you suddenly feel the need to eject yourself from your life. To imagine yourself someplace else. Here.
Oh, if you could only stay.
On my walk, I came across a gentleman walking his dog. We talked a bit, exchanging pleasantries in broken English and I even managed to push a few Italian words out. It reminded me that this is life for some people. It brought me back to the ground and made me realize that this moment of elation that I’m feeling – this fairytale that I’m experiencing – is someone else’s everyday life. But, isn’t that the way it goes?
For the image at the top, it was all about the layering. The way the light was hitting the olive trees, and the grass – the hillsides in the distance. Todi standing triumphantly in the background. This region is rife is distant beauty, the things that you’ll see sitting on a hilltop; but the things that are in your immediate vicinity are also beautiful. I wanted to marry those two things together for this image.