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It’s been a while since I updated shared some of my latest Instagram offerings. Again, these are all from photos taken with the iPhone 4S, which is my point-and-shoot camera of choice purely for the fact it’s always with me.

Still sticking with the Olympic theme for at least one more post, as well as GamesMaking, I was very lucky to see a few events too. I’d come through the very first ticket ballot with tickets for athletics, and then at a much later date decided it wasn’t every day that the Olympics came to town and bought some for the Paralympics closing ceremony.

These photos of the first trip to Olympic Park and the athletics are not particularly remarkable, but again are memories. I would have liked them to be better, but you try getting nice crisp shots of sporting action when you’re a mile up in the Olympic stadium with lots of very excited people. Who often had flags. Anyway, fair warning: there are a lot of photos under the cut…

In an effort to be more timely than I have recently (hello, 3 months of silence & belated posting), I thought I would share some photos from our garden recently. Autumn – in fact, winter now – is definitely upon us and there have been a good few days of blue skies and impressive colours. This has also been good for getting the new-ish macro lens out, although I am dependent on it not being too windy. It’s bad enough that I have to carefully time a macro shot as per my own, apparently in-built, sway, without Mother Nature joining in the game.

However, when she did make an appearance in bird-form, the 70-300mm lens was more appropriate.

Finally, after once again bending the ears of all I came in contact with, the volunteer programme began to roll out and I applied on what I believe was the first day. Keen much? I had long ago stopped trying to be ‘cool’ about the whole process. But then the waiting began. The application period lasted, I believe, at least a month. There was then a period of a whole year for the staff on the Organising Committee to read through them all and start calling people in for ‘selection events’, ultimately interviews. I heard nothing for just over a year after putting my application in, and lots of other things going on in my life helped convince me that maybe it wasn’t a big deal. If I didn’t get to volunteer then so be it – I had secured some tickets to the athletics through the first ticket ballot (to my surprise!) so at least I would have an Olympic experience. But then one day in October 2011 an email dropped into my inbox inviting me to a selection event and made my whole week.

So comes the last of my posts on our Italian holiday. This is a collection of the shots I took with Instagram whilst there, which were subsequently shared once I was back in the UK (boo roaming data charges, boo). I’ve recently – yesterday, in fact – ordered some prints from Instagram. I’m intrigued to see how they come out, as I think by their Polaroid-style nature they lend themselves well to the idea of, gasp, actual real-world photos that you can touch and hold. A review post may follow once I receive them.

Of all the places we visited whilst in Italy, I think Barga was my favourite. It’s always the places you least expect. This was a small town, the nearest of its type to us, in the next valley across in the mountains. It’s walled with narrow, pedestrian-only streets, but being built in the mountains it’s an endearing place with piles of buildings that sit on top and below each other all at the same time.

Barga has strong connections with Scotland as many people from the area, which until comparatively recently was very poor, emigrated there. We learnt whilst we were there that they weren’t intending to end up in Scotland, they were aiming for the USA. But the person they hired to sail them there by boat was a bit of a jobsworth and so dropped them off on the Scottish coast and told them it was America! Fantastic.

Out first stop in Firenze/Florence had been the Duomo, and being the first stop we were still feeling quite keen as we came out and gazed up at the Campanile. This is a bell tower sat next to but not quite joining the cathedral. You can climb to the top of it, an alternative to going up into the dome. So we did. As I said – we were still keen, and also in denial about the temperature.

Although the 400+ steps were not perhaps the smartest thing to tackle given the heat, and our bodies, clothes and the olfactory senses of anyone passing too close by probably suffered as a result, it’s not really worth complaining about given the views and experience in general. And why would you go to Firenze/Florence and NOT get up high?