Welshot Focus - Issue 4 - December 2017

14 DAYS IN TUSCANY
by Judith Bond
Who remembers Truprint? Back in the day when
we all had film cameras on holiday, snapping
away and then posting our films off in printed
envelopes, and waiting with baited breath!
Holiday photos - love them or hate them?
A week later a fat package would drop on the doormat –
great excitement, followed quickly and often by crushing
disappointment.
I’m sure some of you had better camera skills leading to
more pleasing results, but for the masses - like me - with our
brightly coloured compact film cameras - the results were
mediocre, at best.
There were the blurry family shots, the overexposed beach
scenes and the embarrassing poolside pictures that went
straight in the bin!
Let’s be honest, it was all a bit hit and miss even for the best
of us.
When I joined Welshot a couple of years ago, holiday photos
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weren’t on my mind at all. I wanted to improve my basic
camera skills for my business and take better photographs of
my cakes.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about focal lengths, F
stops, shutter speeds, exposure compensations, as well
as composition and lighting. All useful skills for cake
photography and blogging. And it’s paying off, I think?
So last summer, Mr. Bond and I took the plunge and
booked our first European holiday for 3 years and quickly
started counting down the days until our September Italian
adventure, I soon realised that a happy by-product of my
Welshot sessions might just be that, this year, my holiday
photos could be in with a chance.
So off we went - camera bag, lenses and tripod in tow, or
rather in hand baggage, carefully packed and carried like the
crown jewels.
If you fly with your camera, you’ll know - it’s quite a
performance. Of course, it’s not just the camera, lenses
and tripod that have to be disrobed and untubed as you go
through security. There’s the lap top, the iPad, and all the
chargers and adapters, which is quite a balancing act when
you’re kicking your shoes off, puling your belt out, removing
jewelry, watches and jackets and enduring the inevitable “pat
down”.
It’s quite exhausting! Thank goodness for the oasis of the
Business Lounge – peace and quiet, comfy chairs and free
prosecco!
But the real reward, after a good night’s sleep was quickly
finding ourselves relaxing in the warm Tuscan sunshine with
a frothy cappuccino looking up at the perhaps infamous
Leaning Tower of Pisa, famous only for being an engineering
disaster. We've done Rome. We’ve done Naples and the
Amalfi Coast, but never Tuscany. It’s always been a dream
of mine to visit Florence and a short stop in Pisa marked the
beginning of our Tuscan adventure.
After a lot of thought I packed the 18-55mm wide angle and
50mm prime lens which turned out to be the right choice.
The wide angle was on the camera most of the time, with an
occasional change to the prime for closer work.
After Pisa, we took in Lucca, Montepulciano and Florence
covering most of the Tuscan hills, visiting picture perfect
villages along the way. It was harvest time in the vineyards,
and porcini and truffle season in the forests. We enjoyed
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