Photography holidays and the digital revolution

Its hard to believe that it was only 12 years ago that digital photography was almost unheard of – what a revolution has occurred since then and things are still changing very fast. However, it’s not only a technological revolution but an aesthetic one as well. A photographer now has so much more control not only during the picture taking process but also in post production as well.

BD (Before Digital), to print a 6x12cm negative you had to buy an expensive large format enlarger and print in the dark room. Now, everything is done on the computer and printed on a printer and ‘stiching techniques’ give great quality images that used to only be achievable with expensive (and heavy) large format cameras.

Much of the aesthetic of picture taking has remained unchanged despite the digital evolution, but does it have to be like that? High dynamic range photography (HDR) is a software advance that is already producing results that can result in images quite unlike anything we actually see.

And this surely is the point, photography as an art is not just about objective reality it is about our perception of the world. If painters like Gauguin used colours that reflected his mood rather than the reality ‘out there’ why shouldn’t a photographer do something similar in Photoshop? In fact a photographer now has many of the weapons at his disposal that were once the exclusive property of the painter. Munch bent and waved images to reflect his feelings of angst or even terror, a photographer could now do the same with the warp tool. Tamara Lempicka highlighted and intensified a particular colour (she was particularly fond of blue, now known in fact as Lempicka Blue) while using a palette of shades grey for the rest of the picture, a photographer can go down a similar road using saturate and desaturate to create mood.

The digital revolution has changed our perception of what is possible in photography, but has it changed what is permissible?

Article by our wonderful photographer in Tuscany and Umbria – Patrick Nicolas.

Patrick teaches photography weekends and photography holidays in Umbria, Tuscany and Lazio.

The landscape is of unrivalled variety with lakes, hill towns, Etruscan remains, Roman ruins, Mediaeval towns, Renaissance architecture, and the Mediterranean coast. With Patrick and your camera, you’ll go off the road exploring the landscape in a Land Rover Discovery: it’s up early home late, but if you want to spend time by the lake doing nothing that’s OK too. Most of the area is at a height of 300 (900ft) metres or more so it rarely gets unbearably hot in high summer and is the perfect location for some great, varied photography opportunities, unique to this area of Italy.

To find out more, visit our website:  Photography holidays in Italy