tuscany # 7-8 ~ you pick your tools and you make your choices
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 12:22PM 
Montefioralle, Tuscany • click to embiggen
Tuscan soil ~ on a road to Pienza • click to embiggenWith only a few exceptions my picturing pattern, lens-wise, was to use a wide-angle lens in villages / cities and a telephoto lens in the countryside. This picturing MO was not really a conscious decision so much as one that was dictated by my sense of selectivity re: the referent.
To be perfectly frank, the Tuscan countryside is not at all like the Italian tourism picture postcard industry presents it to be - color-drenched rolling hills dotted with Italian cyprus trees. To be sure, those scenes are there to be found and pictured (by engaging in the medium's act/art of selection), but, once again to be perfectly frank, one could much more frequently engage in picturing those hills dotted with utility poles and high-tension electricity towers / power lines.
Consequently, on those occasions and at those locations where the Tuscan countryside presented itself picture postcard style, I was inclined to be very selective by using a telephoto lens - 300-400mm - in order to isolate the more picturesque elements in the overall scene.
In the many hilltop Renaissance-era villages we visited, I found picturing them to be more along the order of get-as-much-as-you-can-no-matter-what-the-hell-it-is into the picture. To my eye and sensibilities, those scenes are a magnificent visual jumble of angles, textures, surfaces, light, activity - all of which must be seen together in order to convey the character of the place. Consequently, a wide-angle lens seemed to be the tool of choice.
All of that said, I did, in fact, make a fair number of pictures employing the exact opposite of that picturing MO - wide angle lens in the countryside / telephoto lens in village location.
PS - relative to picturing with a telephoto lens: thanks be to the gods of technology for all that Image Stabilization stuff - in my case, in-camera IS - because I did not take a tripod on our trip. I did bring a mono-pod but for some reason it always seemed to be back at il Bacio.
Reader Comments (1)
those scenes are a magnificent visual jumble of angles, textures, surfaces, light, activity - all of which must be seen together in order to convey the character of the place.
The charm and challenge of much of the older parts of Europe. Not to mention the dark corners and bright spots of daylight all mixed in.