Images On Tour

Images On Tour

by William Lulow

Since this is the first guided tour I have taken my camera on, it certainly has produced some challenges photography wise! When you are part of a tour, you don’t have the time to stop and investigate a place for photo opportunities. The guide is always keeping you moving, going from place to place. I have spoken about this before, but this particular trip, I have found it very difficult to make the pictures that I wanted. Instead, I have had to rely on looking for light conditions that were favorable to making a good photograph and I often had to make those images quickly. Here’s one I did in Florence, Italy where the light and reflections happened to be just right:

Sometimes, I had to make images literally as I walked from place to place as this one of a door in Assisi:

Every once in a while, the tour came upon a view that, landscape-wise, just had to be made. Like this panorama of Florence, Italy:

Or another shot on the run in Orvieto:

I have been discovering, while touring Italy, that many street scenes are kind of the same from town to town. Here’s another from San Gimignino where, when touring, it’s almost impossible to come across an empty street, unless you are there at an unusual hour. On a tour, you can never do this. 

So, this particular day, I began to shift my focus from landscapes to people pictures (street photography). Here is another example:

So, images like this still might delineate a place, but it is not strictly a landscape image. 

I have been finding out that many of these European small towns begin to look the same after a while. They were mostly built in the middle ages and are built on hill tops for defense purposes. When you are on a fast-moving tour, you can’t wait for the right light, or just the right moment when there are thousands of people around. You have to make the best of each situation and every once in a while, you will get a really good shot.