The making of an image - Tuscany

Having just recently come back from a photography tour in Tuscany I’ve had time to reflect on the landscape and what I saw. Impressions of Tuscany before I went was its an area in Italy, some of the images I’ve seen were bathed in beautiful light, old homes and rolling hills, simplicity in compositions. Somewhere different to photograph.

Now having been there I realise to drive around the region takes time and contains a number of smaller areas, each with its own character and distinct visual appeal, mountain forests; medieval towns and cities rich in art and history.

What I experienced is Spring in Tuscany can be wet, cold and challenging. Walking through the wheat fields after rain, with clay hanging off the shoes is not for the faint hearted. I wish I had packed the wellies. The effort is worth it when the light dances across the landscape. The light conditions were so soft, the simplicity of the compositions available was amazing, the texture and detail in the wheat fields was stunning, the colour of the landscape with the old homes is a photographer’s dream. The early morning starts, and late nights takes its toll, but now I can look at my images and say “yep it was worth it” and I can see why it is a mecca for photographers from all countries.

In camera

This image was captured at sunset in a location known as Vitaleta Chapel, Pienza. To walk to the chapel takes about 10 mins, while walking down the road what captured my eye was the glorious soft green wheat fields with the leading lines towards the chapel.

This view is from the back of the chapel, I wanted to stop but the group was setting up to capture the front of the chapel, a well-known photographic icon in the area.

After waiting for sunset to eventuate and capturing a number of images, I still wanted to capture that view and angle I first saw as I walked down the road. I made my way back and looked at the composition I had in mind. This chapel has another building on the left-hand side, but I wanted a simple composition featuring the chapel and trees only, with the wheat fields dominating the foreground. The light was soft and some cloud cover, but no colour in the sky. I set up the tripod / camera angled it to capture the image I had visualised in my mind, it was a tight fit on the left-hand side. I concentrated on the foreground when taking the image. I have the rule of thirds showing on the back of my screen, I often shoot in live view, so I can see the composition. As I clicked the button I was already thinking what I could do in processing to bring my idea to light.

Some of the Post Processing techniques

• Post Processing to me is a way I feel I have artistic licence to create an image I have in my mind. I sometimes go back in my memory to draw on the experience I felt, then I will create an image with that feeling in mind. To me it was the light, the texture of the grass that made me stop and capture this landscape.

• My thought process to edit this image was to have a simple composition, the hero being the chapel and the supporting features – the light on the wheat field. Here are a few of the techniques I used to create this image.

Lightroom

• I have a pre-set I created that applies – Remove Chromatic Aberration, Enable Profile Correction, straighten image and a few other techniques this is my base for every image to give consistency in my editing

• Then I adjusted shadows, added more warmth in the temperature setting, deleted dust spots and a few more adjustments

Photoshop

• First, I added another sky over the top of this one to give it some detail and cover the blue area to give a uniform look

• I replaced some of the blown highlights in the sky – bit like patching an area

• The next step was to tidy up the image – removing unwanted objects in the foreground

• As mentioned the area on the left-hand side was tight and did not give space to breath. I extended the canvas and used Fill/Content Aware to fill in the blank canvas. A fabulous technique, this gave the extra space I was after

• Sometimes with images I feel there is something missing and I will often flip it, for whatever reason I can’t say. This is why the trees are on the left side instead of the right

• With this image I tried some new techniques I learnt on the tour – brush in the light where you want it first to give the dark and light shading. For this I used a Brightness and Contrast Adjustment Layers and Curves Adjustment Layers and brushed in the light and shade in areas in the foreground. This took about 10 Adjustment layers

• Next, I did a Global Adjustment with levels and curves

• This was my base workflow

• Now I added layers using Nik (still a favourite) -Classical Soft Focus, Sunlight to paint the light in the foreground, Glamour Glow (I brushed the areas in)

• After using Nik, I applied several more layers in Photoshop – Hue/Saturation, Lumosity Masks, I added an Orton technique to the image

• Last steps were to use a technique that adds contrast to the midtones and add an Auto Curves Layer

The lesson I learnt when editing this image, the tones are different to what I am used to, so I had to experiment with some different post processing techniques to end up with the result. I had fun creating.