Music is freedom

Last Saturday I was in Umbria, and I had the chance to attend a very nice event which was taking place on the Isola Maggiore, one of the three island on the Lago Trasimeno, in Umbria.

This event, called Music for Sunset, is a very nice music festival which is held around on the small island, involving several different artists and genres.

When we reached the place, there was a pianist playing on the harbour, and the music he played was really nice.

It was already quite late in the afternoon, and sunset time was approaching. A magnificent view was then offered to us: the sun was going down just behind the pianist. That was a magical moment, when the colours and the music were melting together, giving life to an incredible spectacle.

The clouds were just that much above the horizon, which permitted the light to pass through. I was expecting an amazing sunset.

I tried to get in the best position for photographing this subject, which actually meant lying on the ground, just a few centimetres from the water, with (trust me!) big risk of falling into the water with my camera.

I tried taking several shots, hoping for the perfect moment, which eventually happened. While playing, the pianist suddenly looked above him. Music, sunset, and inspiration, all was there at once. I looked into my camera screen, and there it was, the photo I was looking for.

Now, it's a real pleasure to share it with you.

I hope this image can render the feelings I had at the time, and that you can enjoy looking at it as much as I enjoy taking it.

Sunset on Lago di Candia

A few weeks ago, we finally had a sunny Saturday  and I decided to call a friend of mine, and to go with her to Candia Canavese, a small village not far from Torino. There is a nice lake there, and I wanted to take some pictures at sunset time.

After about 40 minutes of train, and a nice walk, we finally got to a place on the lake which offered a nice view, an interesting subject, and it was also the right time of the day.

I set my tripod and framed to get an interesting composition. For shooting, at first I wanted to take a long exposure shot; so I mounted an ND1000 filter, calculated the exposure time, pushed the trigger and waited.

Unfortunately, while the boat looked rather still, it was actually slowly moving, which caused the image to be too much blurred.

For this reason, I decided to remove the fiter, and to go for a shorter exposure time, long enough to blur the water, but not enough to let the boat move. 1/2s looked to be perfect, when closing at f/16. On a FF, this aperture is closed enough to grant for a very long focus depth, still without introducing diffraction problems which would then affect the image definition. Also, shooting at ISO100 granted for a low noise image.

In post processing, I then corrected the exposure, and applied some local curves, I increased the saturation in some zones, and applied some final sharpening.

The result is the image in this post.

The dock and the boat, with their blue, cold dominant, are a good subject for foreground. Their lines lead to the hills in the background. Here, the sight is lead to left, were the warm sunset colours give a sense of calm and peace.