Photography is not so much about recording objects, people, or landscapes as it is about capturing nuances of light. The photographer’s specific subject matter forms the framework that illumines the varying intensities and tonalities of light.

It is light that compels many photographers, myself included, to travel to distant places, to arise well before sunrise, to continue working long past the time when any sane person has long since departed for dinner and evening entertainment. Photographers must work with what they have at hand, denied the ability to observe the light on a given subject and recreate it at leisure.

Over the years, I have seen much compelling imagery from Tuscany – that small area of north-central Italy – and the quality of Tuscan light is long renowned, having inspired generations of artists of every variety. There is softness to the Tuscan light, especially during the “magic hours” preceding and following sunrise and sunset.

My third, and most recent trip, to Italy covered three weeks in May, 2007. For the first two weeks of that period I was part of a group of photographers in a tour led by Nancy Rotenberg and Jeremy Woodhouse, along with eight other participants. We limited ourselves to the heart of Tuscany, working in an area something less than 70 by 30 miles from Florence in the north to the valley of the Orcia in the south. We spent several nights in Lucarelli photographing in central Chianti, and then two more nights in the Crete Senesi region, working out of Rocca d’Orcia. Upon conclusion of the tour, I spent another week working solo, heading back down to Montepulciano, and then working my way north with several nights in Greve in Chianti and one final night in Florence before heading home.

All of the images in this exhibit come from this trip. Part of the magic of Tuscany is the topography: rolling landscapes that provide a variety of surfaces to catch the light in different ways, as well as providing vantage points. Farmlands intersperse with woodlands and towns, the texture of vineyards contrast with wheat fields and rolling grasslands. Here is the magical combination of light, textures, masses, line, and edge, in short, all the components of visual design, none out of balance with any other. It is the joy of being immersed in this visual abundance that has drawn me to Tuscany, and which will surely impel me to return.

Just for the purposes of organization, I have divided this web presentation into four areas: Florence, Chianti, Crete Senesi, and finally works from all three areas which I am grouping together due to symbolic content. Because in so many of these images, time of day was a critical factor in their success, I have included the time of shooting, so easy to recover from image metadata. All shot with Nikon digital cameras and Nikkor or Tokina lenses. For me, this trip was a personal milestone inasmuch as it marks my first extended all-digital shoot.

This web exhibition is an expanded version of a static exhibition now showing at Gallery XII in Wichita.

Florence		Chianti
	Flowers
Crete Senesi		Symbolic Works