When the digital photographer is taking pictures in Tuscany in May, he or she looks for fields of poppies to get the best picture of Tuscany.
Finding the right field of poppies in front of the right view of a Tuscan town can be hard. You think it might be easier to draw a field of poppies on your computer at home. Well, it is a good option now and is used a lot in the world of professional photography, but it still takes a lot of work to do it well.
This time, you'll need to take two pictures: one of the view of your chosen town in Tuscany, preferably with a well-defined, gently sloping hill in the foreground, which will be filled with poppies digitally later; and one of the poppy field itself, taken in the same light as your first picture and on a hill or field with a similar shape. It will look like a collage if you put a flat field of poppies in front of a hill-shaped background. So there's no way out of driving around Tuscany to find the right shot.
It's a good thing that driving slowly along the winding roads between jewels like Pienza, Montepulciano, San Quirico d'Orcia, and Montalcino is more of a pleasure than a chore. You don't even need a camera as an excuse. Get a friend to drive so you don't end up in a ditch trying to see more of my favourite mountain, Monte Amiata, or the towers of Siena in the distance. You can explore strada bianca (dirt roads) with the help of a detailed map, but they aren't always accurate, so be ready to head off into the unknown and turn around at a dead end. That's all part of the adventure. The magic of Tuscany is the unexpected views, like a crumbling brick farmhouse hidden among cypress trees or a perfect field of poppies.
You've found your shots of the town in the background and the poppies in the foreground. Take a lot of different pictures of the same thing, using different depths of field, points of focus, angles, and lighting. You can get a different angle of light on your poppies by going back to the same place at a different time of day. You need a lot of shots to play with on your computer when you get home. Once you get home, you can't re-shoot, so you have to use what you already have.
Now you have hours of fun ahead of you choosing the images you want to use and then putting them together in a way that looks natural to make the best illusion that looks easy. Only you know how hard it was to take the perfect picture of Poppies in Tuscany.
