As a professional photographer I don’t do tours through iconic locations like those whirl-wind bus tours (“If it’s Tuesday it must be Belgium”, yeah, that movie!). If I’ve targeted a great subject area I want to hang around for at least two or three days to check angles and lighting. One of the most important things I must know is if a particular subject is going to be best at Sunrise or Sunset. So, I’ll usually plan to photograph the subject at both sunrise and sunset and then return again to photograph it at the best time. This is simply what I call “good coverage” of a subject.
So, when we went to the Isle of Capri, Italy, I did my research and picked a hotel on the Mediterranean side of the island so our view would be of the famous Faraglioni Rocks and the sea. That put me in the position to easily capture this famous view at any time of the day.
Here’s my first version of the rocks…
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| f22.0 @ 1/250 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 42mm |
This was done about a half-hour after sunrise on May 5th. During the week we were there it rained only at night giving us nice clouds and blue sky in the mornings; perfect photography weather!
I liked this image, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted something more dramatic; more like a sunset in look. But, of course, an actual sunset wasn’t going to happen on theses rocks because the sun was setting behind me on the other side of the island.
After our excursions to the other side of the island the next day I made a point of getting some images of the rocks at a different time of day.
Here’s a bigger view…
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| f16.0 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 19mm |
The weather was marvelous and kept producing terrific clouds, so I went vertical to capture those cloud layers. I converted the image to B&W with a little tone mapping for cloud enhancement.
A few days later we took a shuttle to Annacapri, the big side of the island, and did the chair lift ride to the highest point on the island, Mt. Solaro, at 1932 feet. With the clear atmosphere we had a great view and I got the Faraglioni rocks again in a really big view.
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| f19.0 @ 1/180 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 19mm |
It seemed that almost everywhere we went there was another view of the rocks! On our fifth day on Capri we booked a jet boat to shuttle us to Sorento for the train ride to Pompeii, so I got up early for another Sunrise attempt of the Faraglioni rocks….
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| f16.0 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 24mm |
This time I got up a half hour earlier than the first time (five days ago) and I went up to the roof of our hotel for a higher perspective. This time I captured the “Sunset Glow” I was looking for! It was a great start to what was to be a fabulous day of photography in a place I’ve always dreamed about documenting in an artistic way—the doomed city of Pompeii. But that is another story…
’Til next week…
Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman
Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com
Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com
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