The Photo

I think that these are perhaps the most photographed trees in Italy.

I first came across them in books by Charlie Waite and Lee Frost a couple of years ago when I took up photography, and I've often wondered exactly when it was that they became a tourist attraction. They feature on so many postcards of the area, and pretty much every photographer who visits central Tuscany will make a detour to shoot them. I was there for 3 nights and on the evening I took this, I shared the location with 2 other photographers. When I drove past on other nights (they are situated next to a very busy road), there was always someone there with a tripod.

It's hard to describe the feeling of driving along the road, rounding a bend, and seeing them in front of me, something that I've seen so often in books, an iconic scene of Tuscany, there, right next to the road.

There are really only two places to shoot these trees from; the side, like this, or the more common angle of directly infront. I shot both, but preferred this angle because the cereal was so short that from the front too much of the earth was showing, making the hill look a little bald [link]

At first, I used a polarizer here, but as I was shooting really wide angle, it was leaving an unpleasant over-polarized blue in the centre of the image, so I switched to a two stop neutral density graduated filter (soft grad) to maintain plenty of detail in the sky.

Taken near San Quirico d'Orcia, Tuscany, Italy
Nikon D3 | Nikkor 17-35 f2.8 ED
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) soft edged neutral density filter
1/30 | f16 | 17mm

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. Sadly, I no longer have time to reply to individual comments, but I do appreciate people taking the time to look.
Any questions, please note me.