February 28 - Costume

This trumpeter wears a previous century's costume to play a part in a re-enactment of history in Florence, whereas for the Swiss Guard at the Vatican in the second image, Renaissance costuming is their 21st century work-wear.

February 16 - City Life

I avoid city life most of the time - give me the wide outdoors any day, but when we travel it is the everyday aspects of life in a city that can be most fascinating. Venice is an amazing place where the day to day work still goes on, even though the streets are mostly waterways and the 'delivery vehicles' are, by necessity, boats. The post still gets through, food and goods are loaded and unloaded and people walk or boat to work. Washing is done and hung to dry over the heads of tourists and residents ... life goes on. I love this city.

(I know the highlights are blown out on the washing but I couldn't resist including it...)

January 31 - Broken

This enormous bronze sculpture of a face in the Boboli Gardens in Florence is designed to look old and broken, as if it is part of an enormous classical figure, long broken and decaying, however it is a relatively new work (1998) by Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj called 'Tindaro Screpolato' (Tindareus cracked.) It is the only modern work in the gardens which are classical, terraced gardens with interesting water features and even an intricate grotto, hidden away at the end of one of the paths.

January 27 - body

Sculptors love the human body in all its shapes and sizes - two images from Italy here

First the 'Pieta' - Michelangelo was only 24 when he sculpted this masterpiece and it is breathtaking. Unfortunately it must be kept behind thick glass as it has been damaged previously by a hammer-wielding nutter and had to be restored. The only benefit of this for a photographer is that you can actually get a photo without a bunch of tourists getting in the way :) but there is no way a photo through bulletproof glass can do the sculpture justice - and there is a window and some brightly coloured brown and yellow marble behind, so I covered the window, desaturated the image and added transparent soft light and multiplier layers, then the smallest amount of glow filter. It softens the image and highlights the figures instead of that complicated background.

The other photo I like (don't jump!!) - although it looks as if Christo and Jeanne-Claude have done a hit-and-run wrap, it is actually one of many statues along the top of a building in Modena which were wrapped as part of a restoration process.

January 17 - automobile

So... I was wondering whether to save some of these for 'Iconic' - the horse motif is one of the more recognisable when it comes to cars, but automobile is the word of the day and an impressive collection at Marinello had us captivated for some time as we imagined ourselves driving one or more of the vehicles on display. When I received the list of words for the days I figured that 'in the details was a bit of a theme for the year rather than the first 'word' so instead of images of the beautiful hand-built cars here are some details - scrutineering stickers on an old racer, the iconic stallion on the grille, engines that you can almost hear the roar of...