Trekking in Maiano

Any reason to get out of the center of Florence at this point is a welcome invitation. The need to keep wearing masks on and off, on and off – I understand the importance, but it’s truthfully exhausting. Thankfully just outside of Florence there is a great place called Maiano where you can do some light hiking and be immersed in nature without risking being around anyone else. In fact every time I’ve come up here in the past, I rarely see anyone at all. This time in particular I went with my buddy Rafael who is also a photographer, so we decided it would be a good idea to head out together into the woods for a break from the stress of Florence’s city streets to clear our heads and channel some creative energy.

On this particular excursion I decided to pack a little heavier since my 300mm f2.8L IS has basically been collecting dust so the images seen in this blog post are taken either with that lens, or my Sigma 24-105mm F4 DG OS HSM Art lens. See if you can tell the difference 😉

While taking a 300mm 2.8 lens might seem a bit unwieldy for many – I find I like it quite a lot not because of the size obviously, as it is a beast of a lens, but rather what it forces my mind to do – which is to frame subjects I normally wouldn’t, and focus on details I may otherwise miss or not find very interesting. Shooting with this lens makes me feel similar to how I feel when shooting with a macro lens in that both shooting methods require me to focus on very little at a time, and this was also a great distraction and sort of meditation for me.

Something I particularly like about Maiano is the diversity of plants and scenery that you can find there such as olive groves, hiking trails lined with various flowers, and even a forest with a dense canopy that’s filled with streaks of sunlight, ferns and moss growing various types of trees. The interesting thing about Maiano as well is that you can find an off-road mtb track which is pretty cool, but they also have a Land Rover testing area – I imagine one of those places where they either do demonstrations or testing for their 4×4 capabilities – though I’ve never been there when it has been going on. The hillside through the forest is also sectioned off in various places because it belongs to an archery club so you can find all sorts of targets around – and if you’re lucky even camouflage huts hidden in various places that I imagine are used for either animal watching or hunting I suppose.

Walking up out of the forest you find yourself again on a tuscan hillside walking above and amongst vineyards with a beautiful view of Florence down below – this time taken from a rather unique angle, and really only possible to capture like this if you have a lens with a longer reach such as this behemoth that I started to regret bringing about 5km into our walk. 😉

Once we came back out of the woods on the way back Rafael decided to bring out his drone to fly it around a bit over one of the Land Rover fields. I honestly can’t believe how widely popular these things have become- I mean I can, but at the same time I feel like it all happened overnight. One day photography and videography are limited to what we can see as humans on the ground, or if you have access to a helicopter – and now all you need is less than $1,000 and apparently a flying license.

Did you know that you have to keep a flight log just like airplane pilots do? I know the footage you can get with them is super awesome – but for now I’ll stay with my version of ‘Old School’ aka – Digital photography and filming with my DSLR.

Cheers until next time,

Scott