CINQUE TERRE & TUSCANY 2024: A 4×5 PORTFOLIO
THE BEAUTY OF CINQUE TERRE & TUSCANY: ICONS AND SECRETS
In October 2024, my wife and I spent ten days in Cinque Terre & Tuscany between Workshops and personal work. We have been traveling to both these destinations so often in the last decade that they always felt like home to us. We loved Tuscany so much that in 2023 we made it our actual home.
Both destinations are world-famous, beautiful and charming, but to us they are much more. Cinque Terre are five villages clinging on a rocky coast on the Ligurian Sea. As a teenager, I spent my summer holidays there for years, which makes them very close to my heart, and I know them like the back of my hand.
In Cinque Terre, besides photographing the famous village views that everyone knows and comes for, I always had a lot of fun in finding and portraying the more secret corners, those that nobody ever goes to. If one cares to look, Cinque Terre offers amazing rock formations, minimalist subjects and more, and after having gone there for ages those are the ones that I enjoy photographing the most these days.
Tuscany is arguably one of the world’s most beautiful regions, known for its quintessential, iconic Italian landscapes, its man-made history and – just to name one thing – for having gifted the world the Renaissance. Out of all the diverse beautiful areas of Tuscany, we decided to focus on the northern seaside, close to Liguria, and on Val d’Orcia inland. Val d’Orcia is where we made our home, and I enjoy keeping exploring it and finding new, unknown locations to photograph.
In October 2024, for the first time I tried my hand at these landscapes with a 4×5” camera, back then my Arca-Swiss F-Line, and I truly enjoyed how the meditative feeling coming from the medium perfectly complemented the kind of landscapes and weather.
Contrarily to other destinations I have been working on since starting using a 4×5” camera and which proved challenging (see ICELAND: A 4X5” PORTFOLIO, GLENCOE & ISLE OF SKYE: A 4X5” PORTFOLIO, IRELAND: A 4X5” PORTFOLIO and NORTHERN SPAIN: A 4X5” PORTFOLIO), working in Cinque Terre & Tuscany with my Arca-Swiss F-Line camera was very easy and overall a joy, with a couple of exceptions.
In Cinque Terre, if you want to go off the beaten track and do a little more creative work, you’ll find that a creative approach to tripod positioning is necessary.
In turn, this means that you’ll need a sturdy, tall tripod allowing you, say, to lengthen one leg more than the other two, or position your legs at different angles while retaining stability, and so on.
As well, on the seaside you’ll often need to negotiate with the wind, which is not friendly to a camera with bellows. Happily, during this visit the weather was cooperating enough.
In Tuscany, on the other hand, all is well until it rains; rain will turn the clay-heavy soil into a soft pavement of sticky mud, of the kind that you’ll have a very hard time removing from your shoes – and from your tripod’s feet! Again, during this visit we didn’t have to battle against that, for an overall pleasant working time in Tuscany.
Our 2024’s visit resulted in a Portfolio featuring 14 photographs, between seascapes and landscapes. Here you’ll find a selection of 12 for you to enjoy:
All photographs have been taken on Ilford FP4+ except for the first one taken on Fomapan 200 Creative, both rated at 100 ISO and developed in Pyrocat-HD for 12 minutes and 30 seconds, 10 inversions at start followed by 3 inversions per minute. The film has been pre-washed in water for 5 minutes prior to developing. Negatives have been digitised using an Epson V850 Pro scanner and processed in Photoshop.
Thank you for joining me on this trip to Cinque Terre & Tuscany, it has been great to share this Portfolio with you!
Thank you for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed it! Why don’t you share it with your friends, or drop me a comment to let me know your thoughts about this?
4 thoughts on “CINQUE TERRE & TUSCANY 2024: A 4×5 PORTFOLIO”
Vierri,
Thank you for sharing. I just love Tuscany and your country. I have not made it to Cingue Terre but desire too. I have been to Italy twice hitting Tuscany both times last trip was just Tuscany. I was out of shape for that trip and the hills punished me. I have been working on improving my walking and hopre to return sometime.
Hello Ron,
thank you for your comment, I am glad you enjoyed Tuscany and hope you’ll make it back here sometimes soon!
Best regards,
Vieri
Hi Vieri,
Here after your post to DPReview. Your 4 x 5 shots are beautiful. My 4 x 5 experience helped me to decide that without subsequently doing darkroom prints, the extra work of 4 x 5 wasn’t worth it (to me).
Have you done color work with your 4 x 5?
– Gary
Hi Gary,
thank you for your comment, glad you are enjoying my work! I see your point, 4×5″ is hard work – personally, the thing is I do love the process, which for me is a big part of the end result. And, I think that a digital scan of a negative still looks different enough from a native digital file for me to justify the time and process.
About your question, no, I haven’t done any colour work with 4×5″ – for the moment, I don’t think I will, but who knows what the future will bring. Thanks again!
Best regards,
Vieri