This is an interesting location. The "Hodoos" create a challenge to find individual examples of the fascinating geological formations to photograph and I think this is a good example. I chose to take a three shot image, one EV from normal, with the idea of creating an HDR image, but rather than using the Photoshop option of creating an HDR, I elected to do a photo merge creating a layered "smart object" from three exposures and then editing the layered images into a smart object processed in Adobe Camera Raw. Using this process, I think I can manage the highlights a bit better. For those of you who do a lot of HDR images, I would be curious what you think of the photo merge option vs HDR processing. I like the image, and would appreciate your thoughts not only on the image, but the process as compared to a conventional HDR approach.

After our first week at Lake Garda, the family of our son had to return to Switzerland, as school was about to start. With the family of our daughter from the UK, we relocated 500+ km / 300 miles to the south to the small town of Camucia near Cortona in southern Tuscany, close to the border with Umbria. We had repeatedly visited these two provinces and fell in love with many of the small hill towns and other historic places dotting the area. Here in southern Tuscany, we were staying at a nicely provisioned old farmhouse, again endowed with a large swimming pool, quite isolated and surrounded by vineyards and fruit orchards. As you can see from the map attached below, we undertook a number of drives to neighboring towns both in Tuscany and in Umbria and felt very much at home in these somewhat rustic places with their very own historic ambience.

The experiences we came back with from the places we visited were very varied: While most places were quite busy and throbbed with life, we happened upon small Castiglion Fiorentino in the hills north of Cortona and encountered a handful of visitors at the most, while the "magnet city" Florence was so overrun with tourists that it was practicably impossible to shoot an image of the main buildings or to enjoy the splendors this city has to offer.

There is so much history, art and scenic beauty to these two provinces, that it is impossible to provide even rudimentary explanations in this post. So I let the few images I have culled speak for themselves. - Should you be interested to delve a bit deeper into the local history then you might want to click open the two links I provide below which, I should warn you, are very lengthy - and I would leave it up to you to decide how deep you want to enter into this topic. Links:

Tuscany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscany
Umbria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbria


Notes
TRIP INFO: Set # 1 provides a brief introduction to this series. Please use the link below if you would like to review this intro:
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-797460-1.html

SUMMER TRIP INFO: Set # 7 provides more information on this second trip of the year to Europe
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-797711-1.html

EARLIER POSTS of this series: Access my topic list at UHH, the new posts are listed in reverse chronological order:
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-topic-list?usernum=45105

Thanks for visiting, I recommend viewing the downloads and look forward to your comments and questions.

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