Cinque Terre

I discovered Italy's Cinque Terre a couple of years through the peripatetic Elia Locardi, a photographer who, along with his wife (who is, oddly, unnamed on his website), have no home and just travel. Seemingly non-stop. The minute I saw his pictures of the coastal villages of Cinque Terre with the multi-colored homes perched on rugged rocks above the sea, I decided that my wife, Gloria, and I would go there as soon as possible. We did. Last month. We got lucky with the weather. It rained a bit but that left stormy, broken clouds the rest of the time. I always insist on bringing a tripod on my travels and, boy, did that work out for these pictures. Many of them were long exposures impossible to do handheld. And a portion of those were a minute or two long, enabled by a 10-stop neutral density filter. Other challenges were the extremes in light which I tamed to a degree with bracketed exposures that I blended in Photoshop. And lastly, another reason for the tripod, I took many panoramas -- six or seven shots stitched together so I wouldn't have to use a wide angle lens and get the distortions that come with it.

Here is my first shot at Cinque Terre. I suspect I'll go back for more.