day 50: The Impossible

The day of crazy excitement!

Today was Mission Impossible. The villa inhabitants were split up into 8 groups (5 in each) and then sent to a various town not too far from Florence. The mission was to capture on digital film various subjects, themes, iconic imagery of our various towns in an artistic and beautiful way. We were given a list of 12 categories and a total of 80 sub points. Our mission was to capture 50 of these different sub points and then submit our 12 best images (one from each category) un-altered to a distinguished panel of judges to decide the winner. The result have still not been posted, but I decided to alter some of my best images slightly to enhance them. While these are not exactly the same size or shape as the originals it gives you a good idea of some of the various scenes we captured in our one day mission.

Our town was Orvieto which is approx half way between Florence and Rome, I believe. It is a town built on a plateau of Tufa which is a Volcanic Rock left from an eruption many many years ago. this plateau became a wonderful fortress for the papacy for many various reasons. The main one being the rock face with an extended wall on top to keep unwanted visitors out. It also comprised thousands of tunnels and rooms carved into the soft rock of the plateau. These areas were used to do one work included pressing olives with mules which we saw remnants of in the caverns we visited. The other interesting and unique aspect of this town are the wells The caverns hold many wells that are all 120 feet deep and just wide enough for an individual to climb down collect water and come back up using the foot holds on the sides and without ropes. (they are still unsure how they were able to carve these and be able to breathe thousands of years ago when the Etruscan built them.) The other important defensive measure of this city is that they all bread pidgins for food. We learned that they are very fast breeders and very easy to breed. So in siege and as a main course the city relied on this plentiful source of meat and never ending water supply that even under a 2 year Rome siege could not stop.

We learned that this town has a great history and is very beautiful in the snow, despite it sitting on a foundation comprised of many tunnels (that is estimated that only 1 third of the ground still remains below the structures above). While we were there we were followed by two reporters of the link that later wrote stories and posted some videos on "thelink.harding.edu" also you can see and read about much that is happening here lately from a different perspective. but during our 5 plus hour snow fall we got to wonder this amazing city and explore much of its grounds with little interference with travelors, inhabitants, or really much of anyone, so in that aspect it was the perfect day. It also was a very interesting day and fun day to experience an Italian city and also really focus on Photography in a difficult environment that I am not accustomed too! So many good pictures and a wonderful day I am glad I got to enjoy with a wonderful group of EXPLORERS
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