I read that good wide angle photography is all about getting close. This photo was taken looking straight up leaning against one of the walls in the stairwell taking us into the main area of the Palazzo Ducale. I tried this shot on a number of statues while we were in Italy. This is the best one.
I have quite a few photos to go through from our trip to Italy, so far this is one of my favourites. I post process my photos quite heavily, I don’t falsify my photos by adding stuff that wasn’t there. I occasionally remove birds or other small distractions when they are a nuisance, beyond that I leave the scene as it is. I use HDR regularly to enhance colors as well as other enhancements within lightroom.
I mentioned you have to get up early in Venice to get photos without people in a recent post, here’s one such photo of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. If you make it to Venice be sure to go inside the palace, it’s impressive as is the Opera House.
While sitting on the train home from Italy I finally figured out why I’m not that keen on point and shoot cameras as well as phone cameras. The technology is definitely capable of producing great quality images. My problem with these cameras is the lack of a viewfinder, what the viewfinder creates for me is a window on the world without any distractions.
I’ll have to work on this mental block or find a suitable small camera with a good viewfinder. One of the big pains on this trip was the weight of the gear.
This photo was taken By Louise with a little Canon S95.
After a drive through gridlocked traffic into Florence, we dropped the car off at the rental garage, jumped into a taxi, then onto 4 different trains and the final leg was done in a bus. It wasn’t all that bad, traveling around Europe on public transport is pretty good, we sped past highways with traffic backed up as far as we could see, ran around the Milan and Zurich train stations to catch connecting trains. Sitting in a train does give you quite a bit of time to do other things, it’s quite a peaceful way of traveling.
I took this photo last night somewhere out on the back roads of Tuscany.
They can really alter the look of a photo, without the clouds mixed with the blue sky in this picture, it would be quite a dull image.
There are a couple of different ways to get the picture to look like this. The sky needs to be underexposed compared to the rest of the image. There are a few ways of achieving this, you can use a graduated filter on the front of your lens while you take the photo. Or in post processing use a graduated filter in lightroom. Or set your shot up on a tripod and take a series of bracketed photos and merge them as an HDR photo in photomatix or similar software. Which technique do you think I used?
This was taken in San Gimignano
We haven’t been lucky with the weather in Tuscany, it’s been raining since yesterday. We had a little respite this evening when we wandered around Monteriggioni.
A very cool medieval town still completely surrounded by a massive wall.
We visited quite a few churches in Cinque Terre, they’re all very quaint. I took a couple of shots inside most of them.
Here’s one of my favourites.
Stairs that is, that’s what the walk between Manarola and Corniglia consists of, there’s a nice little 30 minute section along the top. The normal coastal route is closed because of landslides.
Corniglia from the Boat.
My parents have talked about this area of Italy for years. I can see what made them so fond of this place, it’s stunning, the people are relaxed and the lack of any cars is brilliant.
Here’s a rather typical shot of Manarola.
If you want Venice to yourself you’ll have to get up early. I got up at 5 AM and headed down to Piazza San Marco and found it completely empty. I got some great photos, the only other tourists I saw were a couple of other guys toting tripods and cameras. The occasional venetian walked past going to work. Venice is a very silent and serene place at 5 in the morning.
Here’s the other reason to get up at 5, you won’t get a photo like this of Santa Maria della salute at sunset, there’s just too many people trying to get the same shot.
