It's raining lightly on the first day of spring here in Orvieto. The light for photography is still poorly and sickly so we rose early in the hope of getting some good early morning shots as we wandered the empty streets. We set out at about 5:00 am and headed roughly in the direction of the Duomo, or Cathedral. It was not at all cold, and I was comfortable in a T-shirt until after dawn when it got quite chilly. The Duomo has an impressive facade, and though it was not open in the early hours, the detail on the facade was enough reward. The facade is extremely ornate with lots of narrative sculpture over the whole of the area. There are three huge bronze double doors across the front, with very large figures in bronze relief. The frontage is composed of numerous bas-reliefs, bronze statues huge religious images that must be mosaic and columns embellished with glittering patterns of golden mosaics. We took some photographs which will find their way to the photo pages of Orvieto
I've learnt to love the effects of slowing down time in a photograph. If I am under a night sky and I just look at the stars there is lots to see, but a time exposure allows the weakest of stars, even those your unaided eyes cannot see, to be recorded by my camera, but this is not as simple as taking a quick snap. The important thing to start with is to understand that the prolonged recording of an image creates the effect one is searching for, but it also brings many problems. The only way to do a time exposure is to leave the shutter open for a set period of time, usually done with a built in timer or by using the Bulb setting and manually or externally controlling the shutter opening time. Most DSLR cameras allow for a maximum open shutter time of thirty seconds, and this is more than enough for Milky Way shots, but often not enough for other types of time exposure. Today I'll just talk about photographing the Milky Way. I like to use a fast lens, that is, one that can o