THECLAPPCOLUMN CANON PRO CLAPP
Hanging on to the very last moment to photograph a cliché in Tuscany provided the very best visual effect
Lens Canon EF 100-400mm f/4-5.6L
Exposure 1/4 sec, f/11, ISO100
I don’t classify myself simply as a travel photographer. I like to think of myself as a ‘super tourist’, a person who likes to visit and record their holidays and adventures with high quality camera equipment. I communicate this work globally, but sitting at the centre of this small enterprise is an ever curious mind. I love to innovate, but I also love a big cliché and sitting high in the rolling countryside of Tuscany is one of Europe’s biggest photographic clichés – the Belvedere.
It’s another mixed day of torrential downpours and beams of sunshine. I am running a small photo tour to photograph the Tuscan countryside in early spring time. Comedy had already struck after I placed a pair of Nike trainers on the roof of the van, while putting on my walking boots. I drove up the road to my accommodation to drop off some gear and upon my return there was a shoe sitting in the road. I soon realized, however, that it was my shoe. I'll fast forward, but imagine twenty minutes detective work with my assistant Jess, recreating it’s potential trajectory and the failed combing of a roadside wheat field.
Lens Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM +1.4x III
Exposure 1/320 sec, f/11, ISO200
The last day of the tour, I have promised everyone we will ‘lower’ our upturned creative noses and shoot the Belvedere. My approach with any cliché is to avoid yawn-worthy compositions and try to shoot it differently, at night for example, or even in a different frequency to avoid another eye-rolling facsimile.
I have found a viewpoint in the fields below, similar to the over-populated orchard view on the road above that most workshops favour. We’re all elated as the early rise has been rewarded with mist, something that has eluded us so far. The lane leads to a comfortable view point, looking across the fields into the dawn light, to the Belvedere house surrounded by cypress trees on a small hill. Everything seems underwhelming as the predawn blues lift, but then a soft honey yellow starts to glance across the dewy fields.
I put the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L at 200mm and compose the scene with my Canon EOS 5D Ma
