Poppies in Tuscany 2 – Digital Flower Pictures

It can be hard work locating the perfect field of poppies in front of the perfect view of a Tuscan town. You think it might just be easier to slap in a field of poppies on your computer at home later. Well, these days it is a viable alternative, one much used in the professional photography world, but if you’re going to do it well, there is still a lot of work involved.

This time you are going to need to find two shots: one of the view of your chosen town in Tuscany, ideally with a nicely defined hill curving gently in the foreground, which will be filled with poppies digitally later; the other the poppy field itself in a similar light to your first picture and on a similarly contoured hill or field. A flat field of poppies stuck onto a hill shaped foreground is just going to look like a collage. So no escape from the driving around Tuscany searching for the perfect shot then.

Just as well that it is more of a joy than a punishment to potter along the winding roads between such jewels as Pienza and Montepulciano, |San Quirico d’Orcia and Montalcino, you don’t even need the excuse of photography. Get a friend to drive so that you don’t end up in the ditch, craning to get a better view of Monte Amiata, my favourite mountain, or of the towers of Siena in the distance. A detailed map will help you explore the strada bianca (dirt roads), but they are not always completely accurate, so be prepared to head off into the unknown and turn back at a dead end – all part of the adventure. The magic of Tuscany is the unexpected view, a hidden crumbling brick farmhouse with cypress trees, a perfect field of poppies.

You’ve located your shots of your background town and your foreground poppies. Take a lot of permutations of the same shot: different depths of field, different points of focus, different angles, different light situations. Return to the same place at a different time of day to get a different angle of sunlight on your poppies. You need a large choice of shots to play with when you get home to your computer. Once home you can’t re-shoot, you have to work with the material you’ve already collected.

Now you have hours of fun ahead of you: selecting the images to work with and then juxtaposing them perfectly and seamlessly to create the ultimate illusion, that looks effortless. Only you have the satisfaction of knowing how much work went into creating the perfect photograph of Poppies in Tuscany.

Copyright 2006 Kit Heathcock

Poppies in Tuscany – Definitive Flower Pictures

A splash of scarlet poppies among lush green fields in the foreground, a medieval hill town in Tuscany, the red brick warm and glowing, in the background – the photograph travel brochures dream of. People will flock to see fields of poppies. Finding the perfect combination to photograph together in real life, even in Tuscany, isn’t always easy. (See my article Poppies in Tuscany – the Digital Photography Alternative if you’re tempted to try to create the shot digitally).

Everywhere you drive among the Tuscan hills in late May, early June the fields of poppies cut a swathe of picturesque red and strike a chord of nostalgia in those from countries where agriculture is now dominated by herbicides and pesticides. So the poppies are everywhere, medieval towns are scattered liberally over the countryside, but to find the two strategically placed at the right angle to each other, with the right light, to get the ultimate shot, involves a lot of driving down tracks and dirt roads.

Drive south from Siena, towards Montalcino, San Quirico d’Orcia and Pienza and you will find endless vistas of rolling hills, cypress trees, small towns on hills with Monte Amiata gently curving on the horizon, here and there splashes of red lure you into finding a strada bianca to get closer – could this be your shot?

Maybe we will have to allow for other possibilities in the background: a lone Romanesque church with a couple of sentinel cypress trees is a classic shot; or perhaps a tumble-down farm-house. It is very much a matter of luck and perseverance to find the right components of the shot -- the skill lies in choice of lens (telephoto or wide-angle), angle (lying low down amid the flowers or standing up to gain the panoramic view), time of day (morning or evening light).

Look at the shot through wide-angle lens first for greatest depth of field, make sure the background town doesn’t dwindle to nothing, fill the foreground with a sea of poppies. The telephoto gives more prominence to the town or church allowing a bright smudge of colour from the poppies in the foreground. Choose early morning or evening light – once you have found the right place to take the shot, you will have to calculate which is better and wait it out – midday sun will bleach out all colour and atmosphere.

Once the light is right shoot every possible combination of lenses, angles, apertures and framing (vertical and horizontal) that you can think of. By next week the poppies may be over or harvested and next year a different crop may have taken its place. So your shot will be unique, the definitive Poppies in Tuscany photograph of the year.

Copyright 2006 Kit Heathcock