Back from Sicily

And yes, here I'm back!
After 10 days of driving and exploring in Sicily, I'm back with more than 1000 pictures!
And now the tough part: selecting, adjusting, deleting, exporting, publishing....

First some general comments: I already visited Sicily several (and I really mean several!) times for various reasons, but somehow each time I land on that island, I can always get a bit shocked!
This time, more than the the other times, I could really feel the "not-completely-legal-society-organization",  having the unfortunate occasion of being "in da house".
Ok, before anyone starts dreaming about what happened: no one got hurt, harassed or asked for money/favours and similarities,  but the unsafeness feeling was very high for almost the whole period.

Getting on the photo side: Sicily offers wonderful and simply breathtaking landscapes, colours and everyday life scenes that is simply impossible to shot pictures each time the occasion would deserve one! On the other hand I had to deal with quite particular light situations: the first days were simply cloudless, with a very strong and homogeneous light, flattering almost everything.... then, for 2/3 of the vacation, very variable light situations, mainly due to fast-moving dark clouds and short heavy showers. You have to remember that it was also the trip during which I had to test my new gear, unfortunately not my new lenses that were delivered only this week, so it was actually a very good occasion to play around a bit and see what this Nikon D3200 can to when it has a very simple 18-55mm kit lens in front!
So he idea of this post is to show you some of the pics I've taken just to present how the camera performed.

As said, the first part of the trip was characterized by very strong direct light, no clouds in the sky and a very light breeze, as you can see from this frame taken at the "Riserva dello Zingaro":

(1/1000s, f/5.0, 35mm, ISO 100)

In these conditions I must say that there is not so much to complain about: obviously the image is not so sharp as it would have been with better lenses, but the colours are vibrant and realistic, the straw in front is decently out of focus as well as the horizon, and the "subject" is well exposed.

Unfortunately, when framing "more complicated" subjects in the same conditions, the lack of sharpness become a bit more evident, as you can see in this panorama over "Castellammare del Golfo":

(1/500s, f/5.6, 28mm, ISO 100)

Later on, a bit of bad weather arrived: here the sea outside Cefalu' just before a 2-day storm

(1/100s, f/9, 18mm, ISO 200)

For this shot I raised a bit the ISO in order to have a narrower aperture for deeper view and a reasonably slow shutter speed in order to not freeze completely the waves.

Another adorable aspect about Sicily, is how good its subjects are for B&W pictures! Here a lighthouse outside Siracusa with a quite stormy sky:

(1/2000s, f/5, 20mm, ISO 800)

But if I have to resume the whole trip in a single picture, here it is, and it doesn't need any comment:

(1/100s, f/5.6, 55mm, ISO 500)

A wider selection of shots is available on my flickr photostream.

So, what to say, grab your camera, go to Sicily and shot!