Olona Valley

For some it is certainly not the best.... on the other hand it is the Valley that hosts what used to be the most polluted river in Italy; sometimes , in some stretches, it still stinks, especially in spring and summer or when some asshole dumps “stuff” ... although this is certainly not the case... because “everyone loves the Valley”, just in words. For me, "she" is an important friend; "she" has been practically a companion for meditations out of doors and a refuge from the rest of the planet, when the mere sight of people irritated me and I also “shushed” the telephone and its thousand “Beeps”; it has been also my personal gymnasium, in which I poured all my new “discoveries” photography since I started studying and playing. That day I arrived with friends simply to take a walk, determined not to shoot though, so as not to disturb; because I go “to shoot” alone, at most with my girlfriend. “Why don't you bring a car anyway?", she said to me.... actually she says it all the time. “Come on... maybe I'll bring the Oly, so I'll do two infrareds,” I replied. The “Oly” was my first compact digital camera. Now it is old and I don't need it but that doesn't mean it's to be thrown away. So one day I took it apart and removed the IR filter from the sensor; now it no longer has the shutter button, the old “Oly,” but with a damped toothpick it still does its duty, even though it is gluttonous with batteries. So I decide to take my friends to the stretch of the Valley I like best, because the walk is as beautiful as it is long, and we are not so good as to do it by walk in a few afternoon hours; I try to take home a few shots of the places that I stop to look at most when I'm alone--because I have a bad habit of take few photos and looking a lot. Back home I look at them with pleasure, start working on them because “they're not are that bad,” edit them, like them, and upload them to my site.... because the Valley is beautiful, evocative, carefree, sometimes almost poetic and, in photos, it never stinks.