♥ in summer we can taste the rain.

so far, this summer has gotten off to a cloudy start.

with nothing but an endless mass of grey sky to look forward to,

one may easily forget what it's like to need sunglasses

or to feel the gentle kiss of the sun on our backs.

it is on gloomy days like this past week, that i have been tempted to dive

 head.first into one of my coffee table favorites:

massimo vitali's landscapes + figures.

for those of you who are not familiar with massimo vitali,

he is an italian photographer who got his start as a photojournalist in the 60's and 70's,

who worked as a cinematographer in the 80's and

returned to photography in the 90's with a combined sense

of using photography as art but also as a means of portraying italy's

"inner conditions and disturbances of normality,

it's cosmetic fakery, sexual innuendo, commodified leisure,

deluded sense of affluence and rigid conformism."

sitting atop a custom.made 30–foot perch,

massimo vitali focuses his camera (intended for large format film)

on a landscape of unassuming tourists and locals as they 

lather up, dive under, splash around, sprawl out, read, 

shade themselves under, play sports, and chit chat

at the beach in the height of summer.

utilizing a tiny aperture, fast shutter speed and tons of natural sun light,

vitali's camera captures still.life with pinpoint precision,

so not even the tiniest speck of sand is out of focus.

then, he enlarges these images to the size of a large mural,

so that when one stands away from it, they may take in 

the crisp and cohesive reality of an italian beach.scape,

or one may stand super close and enjoy a veritable where's waldo

of beach.goers and sun.bathers.

here are a few of my own massimo vitali inspired pictures:

so, if you are at a beach some time and you happen to see 

a girl pausing above you with a camera pointed,

don't stop what you're doing,

just go with the flow

and know

that you are just another part

of an artist's beautiful landscape.