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

Flower Pictures, Orchids in Tuscany

It’s springtime in Tuscany, early May. Arriving at Pisa airport the air smells different, dryer, lighter, brighter with the alluring waft of some flower scent, even amid the concrete hustle and bustle of airports everywhere. I’m travelling light, or as light as you can get when your camera bag is your hand luggage and you couldn’t quite leave the tripod behind. Not when the mission is a whistle-stop orchid extravaganza, to try and photograph as many different sorts of orchid as we can find, in under a week.

Heading off in a hire car, we leave Pisa behind and take to the hills, a winding, twisting, and convoluted back road towards Siena. The air is fresher and the hint of flowers strengthens until we are overwhelmed by the honeyed scent of broom, pouring in through the car windows. Every which way you look, there is a picture postcard scene, comprising the essential props of a Tuscan photo – cypress trees, warm brick farmhouse and stone church, with gently curving green hills behind. Is it possible to take a bad photograph in Tuscany? Well yes it is. If I give in to temptation and snap every alluring vista, I’m going to find the bright midday light turns everything to dull monochrome, flattens the colours and wastes all my film before I’ve even started on the orchids. I’ll have to take note of the best views and try to come back in early morning or evening light, when it all magically turns golden and lucid.

We know where we are heading – south of Siena, where some friends have been walking through veritable meadows filled with orchids. The challenge will be to find those places by car, along the strada bianca (dirt roads) that crisscross the countryside. The other challenge is reaching our destination, when every few yards we spot a flower spike on the roadside and have to screech to a halt to identify it. Fresh from England any orchid at all is a rarity, but after an hour we are already blasé and we no longer stop for ‘just another spotted orchid’.

The next day we are up bright and early at our first spot on the lower slopes of Monte Amiata. There is an open clearing surrounded by stunted oak trees and bingo – a lavish sprinkling of bee orchids, my favourites, with their furry lip that looks just like a bumble bee. Now the advantage of early morning light and sparkling dewdrops is offset by the fact that I’ll have to lie down in the damp grass to get a good angle. Remember to bring a waterproof next time. I should use a tripod, but first I’m looking through the camera to choose the finest specimens and best setting. In some cases I’ll need to trim the grass around the flower, either with nail scissors or by gentle flattening down. A wide aperture will take care of the background but I don’t want any blurring of grass waving in the foreground. Sort out tripod, get light reading and bracket, bracket, bracket.

These are pre-digital days, I’m using tranny and colour saturation has to be spot on, so to be safe I’ll do five half-stop brackets. I can’t reshoot from back home once I’ve processed it all and seen the results. This also means I have to be selective, I’ll only get six shots to a roll of film, so must just choose the best flowers and best angles.

Moving across the clearing, as the light strengthens, I find a fly orchid, this time impersonating a bluebottle fly, not as pretty as the bee orchid but striking, then setting up for that shot I nearly tread on a fragrant orchid, with its delicate pink flowers. I have to be quick now before the light gets too harsh and contrasty. Three in the bag and it’s off to a bar to get a second breakfast of cappuccino and brioche. The film is safe in a cool box – hot cars at midday don’t do much for it! The middle of the day is for scouting the evening’s shoot, then lunch and a siesta. The light won’t be good again until about 5 o’clock, but we have to be in the right place by then to make the most of it. So it’s driving the back roads again between Buonconvento and Casciano di Murlo.

Over the next few days we cross off our list the green-winged orchis, pyramidal orchid, lady orchid, the monkey orchid with its long tail, a man orchid – not so easy to spot with its greeny-yellow colouring, but now we’ve got our eye in, the orchid shape leaps at us from all sides. A lot of these orchids are also supposed to be common in Britain but I’ve never seen any of them there. Here in Italy they’re everywhere – must be something to do with farming methods, pesticides and all the rest. Here there are a lot of small-scale farmers, subsistence farming is dying out but huge commercial agricultural companies haven’t yet taken over. There are also a lot of wooded and unfarmable hilly slopes. Orchids carpeting the roadside verges though, that’s just showing off!

At the end of the week it’s back to Pisa, hand in the hire car, just slightly dented from overly-steep off-road experiences, and try to persuade the security people to hand search the film bag rather than X-ray it, which could fog the film. They promise that their machine is so modern and foolproof that you can put film through safely but I’m not taking any chances and eventually they agree. So only one more hurdle to go, the lab back home, processing and seeing what I’ve got – that heart-stopping moment before opening the envelope, the huge sigh of relief when you see images on the film, then examining each one carefully and remembering the scent of the Italian countryside in springtime.

Copyright 2006 Kit Heathcock