On Tuesday the 5th of January we restarted our season with a talk on Tuscany by Ashley Franklin. Ashley is a professional photographer based in Belper in Derbyshire, but he has a deep love of the Tuscan countryside and visits regularly. Using images and AV, Ashley walked us through his 6 visits to the Val D'Orchia region of Tuscany where many of it's most famous landscapes originate.
Ashley's visits are all in May, when it is most likely that the valleys will have early morning mist, and we were treated to some lovely shots of mist shrouded valleys with churches or villas just emerging into morning sunlight. May is also when the Mille Miglia classic car rally is held and Ashley had some lovely shots of the cars winding through villages with locals there to cheer them on. A typical day with Ashley would involve a sunrise shoot, breakfast, some location work while the sun rose, lunch, then shots around the village in which they had lunch, before sunset shots at specific locations. Hence we had a mix of village images involving decaying buildings, locals walking through the streets, churches, and flower displays. An encouraging start to the New Year.