Beauty in the dust.

Hi, my name is Elena. I'm italian.
I love computers and the internet.
Since I discovered digital photography I also love taking pictures.

As everyone, I have always been shooting just to remember about vacations, friends or special situations in my life.
But I lately discovered that pictures can have a different value.

I have often noticed tha there is a special beauty in some very common things. But before now I didn't think I could fix it in a picture.
I started to take more and more pictures of common things, not really knowing what I was doing. I had no particular purpose in the beginning. Then an idea started to take form in my mind... Photos can reveal the beauty which usually other people can't see.

I guess one of the things which finally coagulated this idea in my mind was a scene in the movie "American Beauty". I saw myself looking at things throught the eyes of one of the characters. He was watching common things and he could see their inner beauty, their soul, their meaning.

Flowers were my first subject and still are one of my favourites.
It's easier to see their beauty. They're naturally wonderful.
But I guess flowers are not just beautiful for themselves. Flowers are the greatest symbol of the fragility of the human condition. Flowers have the joy, the passion, and the pain in themselves. They summarize a dramatically impossible perfection... they look so perfect and yet so defenceless. An idea that strongly impresses me.

Why "The Gleeam"

So this is a collection of photos I took.
Some were just taken during travels, and their purpose only became clear to me later on.
A few of these pictures were taken by my husband also. He's actually better than me at using reflex cameras. I prefer the digital cams.
You will also find copies of photos and computer-paintings of them.
I love to retouch them. It gives me the opportunity to enhance some details, to enforce something that you wouldn't notice in the plain photo and reveal the idea which is hidden in the object. The idea that I wish to communicate.
If only one person will echo my feeling, looking at one of my pictures, that is enough for me.
That will be my "gleam" of "glee", a drop of joy that will satisfy my need of talking through my pictures.

I further explored the digital painting in another website:
The Glance
You will just find more pictures, drawings and photo-paintings.