WEIRD IMPRESSIONS OF A NEW DIGITAL CAMERA.

I love technology but I think we sometimes lose our creativity to it.

I have always taken all the photographs we put in the Tuscan Enterprises catalogue, (and then, later on, the ones used for the websites) since we started our Villa Rental business some 30 years ago. I remember my first camera was a simple Minolta and all settings were by hand – no TTL, no automation except an exposimeter, and all settings written down for use in similar situations. I still have a lot of those photographs and some are among the best ones we have ever used in the catalogue.

I admit that I did get some decent training in photography from my maternal grandfather, who was a professional photographer and had been apprenticed as a young boy to the famous Alinari Photographers in Florence. He had all the camera settings memorized in his brain and knew exactly what to do in whatever situation or condition. Speed and F-stops were his daily bread and we still have some great photos taken by him during the 10 year period when he was the official ship photographer for the Costa Cruise ship lines. We are going back a good 40 years here.

Anyway, as soon as the first semi-automatic Minolta came out, it was mine and then I spent a small fortune in buying flashes, lenses of all kinds and really learning the basics of modern photography. Mind you, nothing to do with portraits, but everything to do with landscapes, houses, interior decorations, and all those things so necessary to a Villa rental catalogue such as we produce.

In the course of the years, I bought three new SLR Minoltas – ending up with the 800SI DYNAX that, together with my trusty METZ flash has done very well by me and continues to hold a warm spot in my heart. But, as time progressed, I kept waiting for Minolta to follow Canon, Sony, Nikon, and the others and come out with its own Digital Camera. It never happened, as the company wound up on the verge of bankruptcy and was bought up by Sony.

I finally decided to buy a Digital Camera this year and was all set on a Canon 50D, and ready to dish out a small fortune for new lenses, but when I walked into the “Fotoamatore” shop in Siena, with a lens in one hand and a forlorn look on my face, the young shop manager told me to cheer up and to buy the Sony 550 Alpha because Sony had made sure that all the Minolta owners could switch to Sony and continue to use their expensive lenses on its models.

I think this was the greatest and nicest surprise of the year for me. So he packed up the little jewel, gave me a new Metz flash as mine was not compatible with the new camera, loaded me up with a couple of boxes of instructions, CD’s, battery packs and a complimentary lens and trundled me on my way, having spent about a third of what I had expected. So I was beaming when I took my new camera out of the box, assembled the pieces according to instructions, charged the battery pack and also the flash’s battery pack. I was ready to rumble.

I then made the mistake of picking up the instruction book. It is a small booklet, but super thick and almost totally incomprehensible. The camera has something like 150 different functions, each dial or wheel does a variety of things and you can practically make fresh coffee with it. But the reasoning behind it is really a bit daunting. So, I set the camera to automatic and took a few shots.

Hey, they were really great!! Then I attached the flash and wondered what settings I would have to put using the manual system, but decided to take a few internal shots just to see what came out and the camera whirred and made funny noises, flashed and the pictures were better than anything I ever did using my manual settings in the past.

So, the art of modern digital photography, apparently, is to put your camera on automatic and just point at stuff and click the button. The camera does the rest. Great for those who use it for work, like myself, and need to do a lot of photos quickly without having to do too much retouching with Photoshop on them afterwards, but….you know, I think it has taken away all the creativity that I remember my grandfather used to put into his work. It wasn’t just a photograph for him – it was the immortalization of a precise moment in time. I think his pictures will go on being appreciated forever; while my more consumeristic ones will last the short time they are really needed and then be forgotten.

The picture of the camera was taken with my Iphone. The other pictures are tests taken with the Sony itself.

WHAT ARE YOUR TRAVEL RIGHTS AND YOUR OBLIGATIONS?

A few tips and considerations on holiday disasters.

In the course of 29 years of operation as Tour Operators, here at Tuscan Enterprises we have witnessed practically everything that the world can throw at travelers coming to Tuscany or Europe in general. From early 1990 terrorist attacks on trains and airports, to the cancellation of all flights right after the disaster of 9/11 and the Twin Towers, to the latest airport shutdown caused by the Icelandic Eyjafjallajokull (totally unpronounceable) volcano’s ash. Each time some major disaster takes place, I always wonder why it is so impossible for airport authorities and local administrations to handle the problems that present themselves, and which are, basically, always the same.

First off you have a series of people and families that are stranded. They were looking forward to a holiday and suddenly are faced with unfriendly airport lobbies and people who really do not know what to tell them or what advice to give. I have always strongly supported the view that there should be an organized task force ready to enter the situation and help people solve their immediate and urgent problems. This task force should be composed of airline experts, airport authorities (meaning those who run the airports – do not make the mistake of thinking that the airports are run by the airline companies because this is not the case), local administrations and especially staff from the tourist offices.

People need to be informed if the holdup is short or extended and if it will ruin their holiday and force them to postpone it. This is generally up to the airport authorities to tell them. If it is just a hiccup of the system and tied to something minor such as engine trouble or replacement of an airplane with another, or a question of overbooking or such similar problems (hassles, but not serious in the end), then they can be dealt with immediately by the airlines, which are responsible for rebooking and rescheduling the flights and putting up people in local hotels or other accommodations while solving the situation.

If the problem is more complicated, such as flights being cancelled because of some disaster (natural or otherwise), then the airport authorities and the local administrations need to step in and set up specific help desks to assist passengers. Assistance will span the gamut from rescheduling flights, to booking alternative travel via trains or rental cars or bus lines, to finding alternative accommodations for people who can expect to face an extended wait.

This was totally missing during the latest volcano disaster: if the associations that represent local Hotels and Bed and Breakfasts had been present with help desks in the airports, a lot of people would have found alternative accommodations instead of being taken in by hustlers and others who took advantage of them in such a despicable way. The airlines did what they could, but they too were overwhelmed as their responsibility was limited to rescheduling flights, reimbursing tickets, or booking single nights in local hotels. The brunt of the problems that rose was left entirely to them to handle and this is not fair.

Now, what should you do once you find out that you cannot have your flight rescheduled and will probably miss your holiday completely? The first thing is something you should have done when you made your booking if you were due to go to a hotel or to a Villa or similar accommodation: have taken out holiday cancellation insurance.

We suggest this on our website, tour operators suggest it to their clients and so do the travel agents. You can generally get a good deal from your own insurance company and it is worth the cost of 2 – 3% of your total holiday expense. If you do not have cancellation insurance, then the loss is totally yours, with exception of the cancelled flights which airlines will reschedule or reimburse, and if you are on an organized tour, then part of your tour package includes cancellation insurance.

The first thing to do is to notify your family at home and also the people waiting for you at your destination (hotel, villa key holder, agency office, etc) that you are not going to arrive and that they should not wait for you. If the Hotel manages to rebook your rooms, then they are likely to not charge you anything. A Villa or house owner, on the other hand, will probably not be able to find alternative guests on short notice and will not reimburse you as they have simply lost the booking. The nicer owners will let you reschedule a holiday at a later date at a discounted cost to help make up for your ruined holiday. But they are not responsible for your plight. If you have cancellation insurance, at least, asking the owner or the Travel Agent to write a declaration attesting that you were not present for your booked holiday, will put you in condition to claim the full reimbursement from the insurance company.

So, my final advice is really down to that one simple basic bit: purchase holiday cancellation insurance when you book your holiday. You will not be sorry you did so. And have patience when faced with this kind of a problem as there is very little that you can do directly to solve it. Be sure to ask advice from those who are in charge as they are the most updated on what is actually happening.

Photos courtesy of The Boston Globe and my compliments to the photographer.

WILD ASPARAGUS

One of Mother Nature's tastiest gifts.

If you happen to be driving along the back roads of Tuscany (or Italy, in general) and you see people bent over in funny positions scrutinizing the ground up and down the slopes or tangled up in the thickets and underbrush, don’t think they are crazy lunatics or in that they are in trouble – they are probably looking for wild asparagus. This is the season and it is almost a religious experience to search for the elusive shoots.

There are two moments of the year when you see lots of locals out scouring the woodlands: the first is from mid-March to end of April when they are out trying to find the lacy ferns that indicate wild asparagus shoots, and the second is from September to mid October when it is wild Porcini mushroom season.

Wild asparagus are incredibly tasty and have little in common with the domestic varieties that so richly adorn everyone’s tables in this period. Wild asparagus are hard to find and almost impossible to buy because there are very few who will relinquish them after hours spent gathering them in the more impervious sections of the bramble and thistle undergrowth. They are a magnificent present to give to anyone and quite an honor to receive. The long stalks can reach over a meter in length and you usually only use the tender top 10 centimeters of the asparagus itself.

They break easily, so care needs to be taken when cleaning them and preparing them for use. In Tuscany, they are generally either sautéed with some onions and then eggs are added to make a wonderful Frittata, or they become the principal ingredient in a special risotto that you only make during this season. The taste is very intense and rich. There is a huge difference when compared to farmed asparagus.

I have seen attempts made to raise a varietal that imitates the wild version of the asparagus and this particular variety is sometimes seen in the open air markets, but it is a tame version of the true wild asparagus, which is so fantastic in its taste and which entails so much effort to be harvested. The two bunches in the featured picture took Anna Rita and I all morning and several kms of walking on our farm at Casamonti to pick.