Vernazza Clifftop Villa

Situated on the Italian Riviera, and one of the 5 towns which make up the Cinque Terre region, Vernazza is classified as one of the most beautiful villages in Italy. With the only natural port in Cinque Terre, it remains a true fishing village and is perhaps the the most picturesque of the 5 towns with colourful antique houses clinging to the cliffs.

'Vernazza Clifftop Villa' is just one of those houses, sitting atop a purpose built brick facade and overlooking the small harbour, the bright yellow paintwork stands in stark contrast against the blue sky and yet those colours compliment each other beautifully.

On the day this was image was made the sky was a perfect clear blue with only a few small white clouds, which thankfully were out of shot. This photo was taken with the intention of increasing the dynamic range and the colour saturation, most specifically with printing on canvas in mind. That said it does lend itself well to printing on pure white Fotospeed archival paper too. 

The villa was photographed from several different vantage points and with varying focal lengths using a Canon 24-105mm lens. This lens is not a tilt shift lens, and is well known for producing converging verticals (the edges of the buildings slope inwards when shot square on) at the widest focal lengths. Of course this distortion can be corrected in Post Processing but this does mean extra work and to be fair the corrections don't always look right to my eye. For this reason I always try to place my buildings at an angle, although I will shoot some square on 'just in case'.

All 5 towns can be visited on a day excursion via coach from Florence or Pisa, but the day can feel a bit rushed with little more than an hour and a half in each village. In fact the chances are that you will only cover 4 out of the 5 villages as we did. Cinque Terre is popular with hikers, but the villages are accessible via train from La Spezia, and so it is probably worth stopping here for a few days and enjoy the villages at a more leisurely pace.