The Stella Maris Festival (12/21/22)

Yes, the signs are extremely realistic and convincing. Very impressive. : )

And I dearly hope there are more of those 'child monk' heads left, since I keep meaning to purchase more myself....

Yeah, those signs are glorious in their realism.

skywalkersaga wrote:And I dearly hope there are more of those 'child monk' heads left, since I keep meaning to purchase more myself....

There are. Here with black hair:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/324480414041

These children heads are quiet expensive on ebay. I like the Do it yourself approach here. 

And the signs are great - I hope you left one back in Italy for tourists.

Valiarde wrote:And the signs are great - I hope you left one back in Italy for tourists.

LOL That made my day.

It's very nice to learn where the head came from. Great work (as usual)!

I love the crab warning sign. It reminds me that I once bought a preserved crab as a souvenir in Helgoland. Sadly, it lost two legs on the journey back (this stuff is really brittle).

Those signs are brilliant!

Beautiful work, as always.

Whatever the ancestors did to keep the Mutanti at bay, it was not enough and now they are gone. But the few who stayed are stubborn.











Corniglia climbed up quite some mountains. Up there you are definitely safe from the Mutanti Giganti. Mediterrans seem to be always pulled back to the water again by some unknown force, though.


In Punta Chiappa, there is a temple of Stella Maris, a Sea Goddess.













It's quite a bit of photos so I will split in three parts.

GubernatorFan wrote:I love the signs. They look just like the real thing would.
And thanks for the extra info on the head. After Sky pointed me towards a name to search, I saw a listing by another seller (or the same by another name), but for slightly less money.

There is this one with hair:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/175050058074

Thanks a lot, strangely I didn't photograph them that much.

skywalkersaga wrote:Yes, the signs are extremely realistic and convincing. Very impressive. : )

And I dearly hope there are more of those 'child monk' heads left, since I keep meaning to purchase more myself....

Thanks! Didn't I sent you a copy some time?

Stryker2011 wrote:Yeah, those signs are glorious in their realism.

Thanks!

GubernatorFan wrote:

Valiarde wrote:And the signs are great - I hope you left one back in Italy for tourists.

LOL That made my day.

Haha, no but I should have made stickers. Maybe I will.

Randam Hajile wrote:It's very nice to learn where the head came from. Great work (as usual)!

I love the crab warning sign. It reminds me that I once bought a preserved crab as a souvenir in Helgoland. Sadly, it lost two legs on the journey back (this stuff is really brittle).

Thanks a lot! Yeah before you throw the poor crab away you can still send it to me haha.

BAMComix wrote:Those signs are brilliant!

Thanks!

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:Beautiful work, as always.

Thanks a lot!

Ovy wrote:

GubernatorFan wrote:

Valiarde wrote:And the signs are great - I hope you left one back in Italy for tourists.

LOL That made my day.

Haha, no but I should have made stickers. Maybe I will.

Nice! Just remember, if you really want to freak them out, they should be in 1:1 scale.

Excellent pictures.

What a gorgeous little girl and the photos are just as beautiful as always. Love the outdoor shots as much as the indoor ones. The story telling in that first sequence is as cinematic as ever. Beautiful reveal.

Beautifully shot. She looks perfect.

Her mama was jumping from high cliffs into the ocean before she knew Corniglia was already growing in her belly. Maybe that's why she feels so comfortable on those cliffs with no fear of heights.












Beachcombing is a favourite pasttime on peaceful days. Shells turn into shovels and the translucent rocks become pearls.











Here an old mosaic of Stella Maris, the Sea Goddess.


And her worshippers. When plague, war and monstrosities destroyed the old world, a few humble souls were safed on their little boats, to claim the coasts again.


The light of her guiding star led them to safe shores.

BAMComix wrote:Excellent pictures.

Thanks!

Diana wrote:What a gorgeous little girl and the photos are just as beautiful as always. Love the outdoor shots as much as the indoor ones. The story telling in that first sequence is as cinematic as ever. Beautiful reveal.

Thanks a lot, glad you like the sequence, I am quite happy how the wiping away of the sand turned out.

Stryker2011 wrote:Beautifully shot. She looks perfect.

Thanks a lot!

GubernatorFan wrote:

Ovy wrote:

GubernatorFan wrote:

Valiarde wrote:And the signs are great - I hope you left one back in Italy for tourists.

LOL That made my day.

Haha, no but I should have made stickers. Maybe I will.

Nice! Just remember, if you really want to freak them out, they should be in 1:1 scale.

I actually photographed many Italian signs for inspiration, most are unwelcoming, some absurd and funny.

It's around 30 pics , put them into the spoiler.

Spoiler:

More excellent photos! I love the detail of the sand on the bottom of her feet and between her toes. :'D

What an adorable little barbarian of the beach! And her tiny footprints are so cuuute!

My, but the Italian signs are unwelcoming! Your "giant mutants" sign is relatively serene compared to the harsh tone of many of the real signs! Is Italy no longer the easy-going place it has a reputation for having been?

Ok I didn’t see the signs in the spoiler at first. Some of those are intense, lol! What part of Italy was this?

These are gorgeous. The shots on the cliff are perfect. And I really dig the story behind the mosaic.

So you must have been in Camogli then, to visit the Stella Maris. And Porto Venere sounds like the puritan capital of Italy -- I mean what are those clothing hating Teutons to do if they want to visit! How unwelcoming!

Beautiful and evocative photos of Corniglia on the rock and on the beach. One needs real wet sand to pull off the footprints, and you did a great job with those.

More wonderful shots!

Especially the pictures of her on the cliff are awesome!

She is so sweet ! Thanks for the extra pictures, Ovy. This is a fantastic Edge of the world. Made for to do this kind of pictures

She's adorable, the sign looks great and I was wondering if it was actual metal, you did a great job weathering it.

Also are you making an army of children and declaring yourself warlord?  

I was wondering why I was jokingly asked to make giant crab figure for you on my Cthulhu thread, now I know! LOL. Brilliant photography!! Love the child build too, very effective! Reminds me of so many classic movie scenarios from 'Mad Max 3' etc.. After looking at your spoiler sign pics I thought I'd share a crazy one I'd often see riding across Greece through the mountains on motorcycles.

I'm on a motorcycle on a mountain, to my left is a shear drop (usually into crashing rocks and the sea hundreds of meters below), to my right is a mountain, what the hell do they expect me to do?!



The other I can't find a picture of, but I was literally riding through a mound cut in two that used to be a graveyard, so on either side were coffins open to the air with bones in them! I don't know if this was a temporary thing, waiting for the The Church to organise removal of the bones or what but the road was open and properly tarmaced! Nuts! Maybe they were Turks?

Corniglia in the actual village of Corniglia. As mentioned it's on a cliff and you have to go down many stairs to reach the water, that's why it's still not overrun by mutanti.
















High velocity throwing weapons were used to pierce holes into the crab's silhouette.

skywalkersaga wrote:More excellent photos! I love the detail of the sand on the bottom of her feet and between her toes. :'D

Thanks a lot! The sand got all there by itself, it gets everywhere a wise man once said.

davidd wrote:What an adorable little barbarian of the beach! And her tiny footprints are so cuuute!

My, but the Italian signs are unwelcoming! Your "giant mutants" sign is relatively serene compared to the harsh tone of many of the real signs! Is Italy no longer the easy-going place it has a reputation for having been?

Thanks a lot, yeah the sand had the perfect consistency for good prints, it was freshly watered, had to relocate the figure several times because of waves. And I think the number of signs increases with the number of tourists and money spent there. Most of the signs were photographed in Porto Venere, that's were people eat expensive food and cruise around in LED superyachts to fill their inner emptiness.

skywalkersaga wrote:Ok I didn’t see the signs in the spoiler at first. Some of those are intense, lol! What part of Italy was this?

Thanks! It's Liguria.  Here is a rough overview of the way I took.


Well it was a contrasting vacation. I started in Genova and from there walked to Portovenere along the coast for some days. First half of the day was mostly walking up a mountain, here the number of people decreased rapidly the higher you got and most mountains were empty.
In the evening I was often walking down into a coastal town were the nightlife went on until early in the morning and nobody had to starve. It was something between peaceful loneliness and mass tourism haha.

Stryker2011 wrote:These are gorgeous. The shots on the cliff are perfect. And I really dig the story behind the mosaic.

Thanks a lot! Yeah it's kind of Holy Mary the Mermaid if we think of it. As most religious fictions in my unvierses it's based on ehh real religious facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady,_Star_of_the_Sea

GubernatorFan wrote:So you must have been in Camogli then, to visit the Stella Maris. And Porto Venere sounds like the puritan capital of Italy -- I mean what are those clothing hating Teutons to do if they want to visit! How unwelcoming!

Beautiful and evocative photos of Corniglia on the rock and on the beach. One needs real wet sand to pull off the footprints, and you did a great job with those.

Thanks a lot! Yeah as said it was the perfect sand for that.
I guess you mean some Hotel named Stella Maris? Well I didn't sleep in Hotels I always slept outside. Came to Camogli in the evening but didn't get a BnB or Hotel there and borrowed a folding chair by the sea.
The pics are from a shrine on Punta Chiappa, devoted to Stella Maris, as linked for Stryker..

And haha, the worst of the worst place was Portofino. I don't want to (censored) on super rich people, I mean many here have Hot Toys collections, but it seems this place has completely sold itself and turned into a fake world. For me it would be a hellish place to spend a vacation but it's surreal fun if you look at it consciously haha. I was the only homeless sweaty backpack person there at the promenade.

Well and then there is the Cinque Terre, five villages on the coast. Quite popular among Americans. The villiages are kept alive and authentic artificially by the money the tourism brings. They have a very good connection to the railway system and masses of people flood them. I didn't stay long there as it was just too much, fled into the mountains and forests.
My favourite of the villages was Corniglia. The people who came by railway had to walk up for some time, and you had to take many staris down the beach, so a lot of filtereing went on there..

BAMComix wrote:More wonderful shots!

Thanks a lot!

TravelGuide wrote:Especially the pictures of her on the cliff are awesome!

Thanks, yeah those cliff shots always work!

Ephiane wrote:She is so sweet ! Thanks for the extra pictures, Ovy. This is a fantastic Edge of the world. Made for to do this kind of pictures

Thanks so much. Yeah and she actually really was made for this vacation or at least that gave me the motivation to finish the figure.

Theboo-bomb wrote:She's adorable, the sign looks great and I was wondering if it was actual metal, you did a great job weathering it.

Also are you making an army of children and declaring yourself warlord?  

Thanks! And no, while I while create more figures of tribal children, they will always have some parents and elders lurking in the back and keeping them in check, or trying to.

shovelchop81 wrote:I was wondering why I was jokingly asked to make giant crab figure for you on my Cthulhu thread, now I know! LOL. Brilliant photography!! Love the child build too, very effective! Reminds me of so many classic movie scenarios from 'Mad Max 3' etc.. After looking at your spoiler sign pics I thought I'd share a crazy one I'd often see riding across Greece through the mountains on motorcycles.

I'm on a motorcycle on a mountain, to my left is a shear drop (usually into crashing rocks and the sea hundreds of meters below), to my right is a mountain, what the hell do they expect me to do?!



The other I can't find a picture of, but I was literally riding through a mound cut in two that used to be a graveyard, so on either side were coffins open to the air with bones in them! I don't know if this was a temporary thing, waiting for the The Church to organise removal of the bones or what but the road was open and properly tarmaced! Nuts! Maybe they were Turks?

See, now you know haha. And thanks a lot. And I think the point of the sign is not to look up and dodge rocks that fall down at the very moment you pass, but to look out for rocks that might be lying on the street. So if someone crashes into a rock, the Sign can say: "There, I warned you."

And yeah your anecdote sounds like the perfect zombie slasher B-Movie starring a crafty biker. :p

I was under the impression Punta Chiappa and its Stella Maris shrine were in Camogli, but I see now they are a little ways away. So you had a hiking holiday? That tales resolve, skill, and endurance. And you managed to make it artistic on top of all that. My hat's off to you, Sir.

Love the extra photos of Corniglia, and I'm glad to see she was not alone in her scale, judging by the background appearance of Wolf Boy.

Ovy wrote:Most of the signs were photographed in Porto Venere, that's were people eat expensive food and cruise around in LED superyachts to fill their inner emptiness.

I wish I had the superyacht option for filling my inner emptiness.

I saw one of those boats last year, cruising under a bridge that I was driving across in my now-older-model boring lower-middle-class sport utility wagon, and I felt depressed for days afterward, wondering where I went wrong in my life and financial choices.

See, now you know haha. And thanks a lot. And I think the point of the sign is not to look up and dodge rocks that fall down at the very moment you pass, but to look out for rocks that might be lying on the street. So if someone crashes into a rock, the Sign can say: "There, I warned you." And yeah your anecdote sounds like the perfect zombie slasher B-Movie starring a crafty biker. :p wrote:Ovy

Yeah I figured that was the main part of it but it was on the 'old' National Road going from Athens all the way down to the bottom of the Peloponnese so you're basically on a motorway travelling at speed around a lot of steep corners! At least it was great fun when I was young . I've ridden through Italy a few times too, man those maffia controlled motorways are expensive!! And that's for a motorcycle, most countries let us go through for free! The alternative is interesting lol...going around in circles forever on the backroads that seem to go nowhere and are just like your famous pasta! Of course no one spoke English back then, or French, or Greek...paper maps, no mobiles or GPS either , fun though!

Thanks for explaining more about that region of Italy, Ovy. I've never been to that part of the country (other than perhaps driving past) and I am highly amused by your account. Your wild camping/sleeping experiences remind me of another friend of mine from Poland who used to go on foot through every European mountain range he could reach and sleep outside wherever he ended up, even on a precarious mountaintop. He also disliked the touristy crowds.

What is an 'LED' yacht? Just a yacht lit up with LED lights? I clearly am behind the times...