A blog about our photo tours in Italy, photography workshops, photography tips, filters, exhibiting with fun.
Camera Etrusca is starting a new programme of photo workshops in Lisbon and the Coast in spring and autumn – the best times of the year for photographers to tour Portugal and enjoy the Atlantic coast’s dazzling light and warm climate, the buzzing atmosphere in Lisbon, and the unrivalled air of mystery and decadence among the eccentric […]
Read More Photography tour in Algarve, Photography Tour in Portugal, Photography trip in May, Photography workshop in May, Photography workshops in Lisbon
The Bohemian Paradise and Golden Prague in February Course leader and photographer Patrick Nicholas met old Camera Etrusca clients Peter and Deborah in Prague for the first photo workshop in Bohemia. We then headed off by car with our host my old friend Milan Šroubek to the Bohemian Paradise (Cesky Raj) an hour to the […]
Read More bohemia, Caspar David Friedrich, czech republic, Hruba Skala, Mala Skala, Photo workshops in Czech Republic, romantic painter, saxony, winter photo workshop
Freud, Orvieto and Signorelli Freud, Orvieto, Signorelli: the Renaissance frescoes by Luca Signorelli had a profound effect upon Freud. In the entrance hall of Freud’s last home in London, on the right, is a picture of Tivoli, a reminder that Italy was his favourite holiday destination and his spiritual home. 50 years after his death […]
Read More Etruscan city, Freud, Italian hidden treasure, Italy, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, Luca Signorelli, not just photography, Orvieto, photography workshop tour
Freud and a Tale of Three Cities: Vienna, London and……. Orvieto. The Vienna home in Berggasse 19 is easy to spot – he lived and worked in two modest, dark flats on the mezzanine floor left and right of the long red Freud sign; 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, London, is by comparison quite understated, just […]
Read More Freud, not just photography, Orvieto, photo trip, photography workshop tour, photography-workshop, St Patrick well, Umbria
An Off-the-beaten-track photography tour to the ruined city of Castro. Destroyed by the Pope in 1649, Castro was given the epithet The Carthage of the Maremma and today it could be defined as the Renaissance Pompeii. In April 2015 we went on a photo tour to the ruined city of Castro. 415 years ago a […]
Read More castro, Photo Excursion, photo workshop, Photography Tour in Italy
Mock Gothic Horror: painted by Whistler, photographed by Cameron, the tragic story of Christine Spartali, Contessa Cahen. Near Orvieto on a ridge looking over a deep valley into Southern Tuscany stands a sinister looking castle in the mock-Gothic style of the late nineteenth century. It once belonged to the immensely rich Cahen family, still remembered […]
Read More Italy hidden treasure to photograph, photo trip, photographic set, photography workshop tour, photography-workshop
A photo workshop day trip from Orvieto to the Sibilline Mountains in July. Castelluccio di Norcia is well known the world over amongst photographers for its picturesque vales of wild flowers at all times of the year – except when it is under snow which at 1500m is for most of the winter. It is […]
Read More Castelluccio photo trip, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, photo trip, photography workshop tour
Following the ancient Via Cassia, our photography workshop follows the Grand Tour route. The Val d’Orcia, famous and beloved site of modern photographers and artists in Tuscany, to the traveller of yore it was just a desolate region to be got through. For nigh on a thousand years Rome had been the goal of pilgrims following the […]
Read More Cassia, coaching inn, Francigena, Grand-Tour, medici, post house, radicofani, William Turner Orvieto
Join the Camera Etrusca weekend photo workshop in Rome to discover the artists that contributed to its grandeur. The Rome workshop started on the first day with a visit to The Vatican a short walk from our B&B in Prati. We arrived at St Peter’s at 9 to avoid the crowds and only had to […]
Read More baldachin, bernini, dome, Italy, michelangelo, photo trip, photography workshop tour, photography-workshop, Rome photo workshop, st peter's, vatican
A photography workshop in Italy could not be based in a more appealing place than Orvieto, in Umbria, but on the borders of both Tuscany and Latium. Orvieto is girded by city walls, fortresses, towers and gatehouses. You can walk the entire circumference below the walls on an easy, well made path in a little […]
Read More Bolsena miracle, corpus domini, june photo holidays, Orvieto, Orvieto cathedral, photo trip, photography-workshop
The ancient church occupies a site once sacred to the Etruscans. Lake Bolsena was the centre of their cult. The charm of the place lies in its desolate remoteness in the swamps near Lake Bolsena. Until the 1920s malaria was the scourge of the Italy. Often entire communities were decimated because the origins of the […]
Read More Italy hidden treasure to photograph, lake Bolsena, photographic set, photography-workshop, san lorenzo vecchio, St Cristina bolsena, st John Baptist
Just outside Pitigliano lies the Parco Orsini commonly known locally as Stranglers Park, and thereby hangs a tale………… Orso Orsini was a prince of wild ways. Wayward brother of the cultured condottiero Niccolò, he married the beautiful Eleanora degli Atti di Morlupo, whose name was long but her life short. He strangled her in a […]
Read More Bomarzo, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, Orso Orsini, photographic set, photography-workshop, Pitigliano, secret garden, Tuscany, Vicino Orsini
There is an extraordinary atmosphere in the sacred glade so it is no surprise that this has been a sacred place for thousands of years. The Sacred Glade was Christianised, but something of the ancient magic remained: the frescoes that remain in the church are testimony to that. The church was cut into the rock […]
Read More archeo-acoustics, Etruria, etruscan, Ischia di Castro, paganism, phallus, Poggio Conte, shamanism, yoni
“Sunrise glowed red as I climbed along the gorge; when I reached the grove, I saw the altar slab all scattered with brightness, like the harper’s robe. I put down my load, and prayed to Apollo.” Poggio Conte will appear immediately familiar to anyone who has read Mary Renault’s The King Must Die, a novel […]
Read More Etruscan cemetery, Italian hidden treasure, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, Poggio Conte, san colomba, Tuscany
One of the interesting lost sites within an hour of Orvieto we made a Camera Etrusca excursion to the hermitage of Ripatonna. Much of what is now known as northern Latium north of Rome on the borders of Tuscany was until the 1930s a veritable wilderness. Saracen pirates had scourged the area and malaria had […]
Read More etruscan, Italian hidden treasure, Italy, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, Ripatonna Cicognina, Tuscany
I have no idea why, but it was my dream as a child to find underground Roman ruins at the bottom of the garden. This dream was to come true when my wife and I moved to Castel Gandolfo in 2002. We rented a flat in the grounds of a villa once owned by Visconti, bought […]
Read More bergantino, Castelgandolfo, diana baths, domitian, goddess diana, Italian hidden treasure, Italy, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, Rome photo workshop
Rome is known as the Eternal City and no city on earth has a comparable wealth of ancient ruins. The tireless documentor of Roman ruins Piranesi (1720-78) made a good living selling his topographical images to visitors on the Grand Tour. But whereas Canaletto used lenses and the camera obscura to ensure that his views […]
Read More Castelgandolfo, emissario, Italian hidden treasure, lake Albano, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, Piranesi
Italy has an extraordinary amount of antiquities that are simply abandoned; no ticket office, no maintenance, no security, just overgrown. Sometimes I come across a place purely by chance, sometimes I have been tipped off by a local, sometimes because I have read about it and have made a search. I will endeavour to post […]
Read More Alban Hills, Diana Temple, Genzano, Golden Bough, Italian hidden treasure, james Frazer, Nemi, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, rome, Rome photo workshop, William Turner
Late Spring: The Season of Wildflower in Italy. Spring in Italy may have been slow in coming this year, but all that rain means even more wild flowers – especially poppies. Come to Tuscany and Umbria in June and you will see the brightest and most colourful wild flowers anywhere in Europe. Normally poppies last […]
Read More Italian-holidays, photography-workshop, poppies-field, poppies-photos, Tuscany
The umbrella pine, supreme among Mediterranean trees since Etrusco-Roman times is, to quote the woman in our local nursery here in Orvieto, fuori moda, out of fashion. How can this be? Known also as the Italian Stone Pine it is recognised all over the world as an Italian icon. So I ordered two for €45 […]
Read More conceptual art, Daniel Buren, Italian landscape, stone pine, umbrella pineFollowing the ancient Via Cassia, our photography workshop follows the Grand Tour route. The Val d’Orcia, famous and beloved site of modern photographers and artists in Tuscany, to the traveller of yore it was just a desolate region to be got through. For nigh on a thousand years Rome had been the goal of pilgrims following the […]
Read More Cassia, coaching inn, Francigena, Grand-Tour, medici, post house, radicofani, William Turner OrvietoJoin the Camera Etrusca weekend photo workshop in Rome to discover the artists that contributed to its grandeur. The Rome workshop started on the first day with a visit to The Vatican a short walk from our B&B in Prati. We arrived at St Peter’s at 9 to avoid the crowds and only had to […]
Read More baldachin, bernini, dome, Italy, michelangelo, photo trip, photography workshop tour, photography-workshop, Rome photo workshop, st peter's, vatican
