canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso Cantalupo

Below 1000 meters round western side of Sabini Mounts is covered by dense mediterranean bush. The ancient paths and trails drawn millenniums ago by shepherds and loggers suffer aggression by the bush, trying to reoccupy every spot. Paths can survive the attack only thanks to maintenance made by cuttting the bush at paths' sides, as it grows. An abandoned path or trail is doomed to be eaten by the bush in a few years.
As ancient paths and trails disappear Man looses the deep ancient knowledge of the mountain. In a couple of decades mountain becomes wild again.

Canyon of Fosso Cantalupo opens in one of these wild spots of Sabini Mounts. It goes through different rocks (white limestone, pink limestone and flysch) drawing various shapes and colours.

I remember ...

I guess it's due to wrong "white balance" ...
A picture made by a digital camera it's not a simple copy of the scenery in front of camera lenses. It's made by a microprocessor, which analyzes the image with the aim to make it better, more similar to the real scenery. One of the things done by camera's microprocessor is to search for a preponderant colour, usually due to the light. If detected, preponderant colour is eliminated from the picture, so that natural "true" colours can appear in photograph as they would be under white light.

The trouble comes when preponderant colour is not due to light, but it really belongs to the objects in the scene. If most objects are pink, camera's microprocessor will make they look white (or so) in the picture.
That's why rock looks white in many photographs of Fosso Cantalupo. They are pink, instead! wonderful pink rock.

Next time I will try manual setting the white balance. I would like to show you that unusual pink environment.

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