Francesco Gola - Long Exposure Seascape Photographer

Steve and Nick's guest this week is Francesco Gola, a fine art landscape photographer, who shares his journey into photography, his love for long exposure seascapes, and the emotional connection he feels with the sea. Francesco  shares his insights on landscape photography, emphasizing the importance of planning, adapting to nature, and capturing emotions through weather. He discusses the tools and techniques he uses for location scouting, the significance of color consistency in post-processing, and how the experience of being in nature can enhance the photographic journey. 

Nick has been crashing drones since the last show, and Steve shares his thoughts on his new monitor, the 5K BenQ SW2730S, designed for Mac. 

Francesco Gola is a band ambassador for Zeiss, BenQ, Calibrite, Nisi others. 

His website : https://www.francescogola.net/

Nick Church and Steve Vaughan are professional wedding photographers based in the UK. They both use Sony Alpha cameras and lenses.

Nick's website : https://www.nickchurchphotography.co.uk/
Nick's Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/nickchurchphotography/

Steve's website : https://www.samandstevephotography.com/
Steve's Wedding Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/samandstevephotography/
Steve's personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevevaughanphotography

Any technical information given by the presenters is based on their understanding and opinion at the time of recording

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01.091)
Nick, when I was a kid, which was a long, long time ago in my case, one of things I always wanted to do was to learn to fly and learn how to pilot things. That's something you've ever wanted to do at all.

Nick Church (00:13.319)
Well, I did have a flying lesson once, I thought that I would be really good at it, but I was absolutely rubbish. I was useless.

Steve Vaughan (00:20.175)
What do you like is flying smaller things, things that are like, you know, battery operated that you've got cameras in.

Nick Church (00:24.365)
I see. I see. Yes. Yeah. Well, usually, usually great. Do want me to elaborate?

Steve Vaughan (00:33.155)
I think perhaps we should just let the listener know what we're talking about. Tell the listener what happened this week.

Nick Church (00:35.919)
So I was shooting at, yeah, thanks for bringing it up. Well, was shooting at a client just down the road, actually really close client of mine, commercial client, it's a cider farm and vineyard. And I'd been there last week and just did a load of photos for them and some drone video as well. I've got some lovely clips of the facility and all the vineyards and things. As I was just about to deliver everything, I thought...

Steve Vaughan (00:50.872)
Ooh.

Nick Church (01:04.719)
I'm just missing. I really felt like I needed one more clip of a sort of very cinematic kind of, know, that sort of drop down pan up as you, you, as you sort of move forward. So I right, I'm just going to bomb up there. was literally sort of five minutes. I could almost walk it. So I thought I'd just, I'll just pop up there. I'll be there and back in 20 minutes. And, um, yeah, so I did a few of these, um, runs and it was just right. The framing was, I thought that's perfect.

Steve Vaughan (01:08.165)
There's always one more shot, isn't there?

Steve Vaughan (01:15.568)
Hmm.

Nick Church (01:29.507)
just about to land the drone and then the sun came out and I thought I'm just going to do one more because that, would actually match better the footage that I had last week. So I went back for one more run and flew it into a tree, flew it into a tree and it was high. Yeah, was, it was high and it just clattered down and I did find it. I recovered, I recovered the unit, the gimbal snapped off and it's my, my Mavic 3. So, yeah, and interestingly,

Steve Vaughan (01:42.137)
And what is the really big tree with really big branches and really hard things.

Steve Vaughan (01:55.22)
dear. Mavic 3, not cheap. Gosh,

Nick Church (01:58.991)
I know. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what the, the work that I just invoice this client is almost exactly the same as what I spent today to buy replacement. So I've just bought, I've just bought because I've got a shoot coming up. can't, it is, it's been sent off now to be repaired, but I can't be, I can't be without it. So I've bought a replacement and I'll have to sell that one when it, when it comes back in whatever state it comes back. So I have got a Mavic 3 Pro now, which has got the extra, um, the 70 mil lens as well as the, so.

Steve Vaughan (02:07.899)
You

Steve Vaughan (02:14.885)
Right.

Steve Vaughan (02:24.347)
Hmm.

All right. Yeah, of course he does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (02:29.377)
So that's it, you know, that's where I'm looking at it. Every cloud has got silver lining. I'm going to be able to create some slightly more engine. Yeah. And I cut myself, and I cut myself getting to the tree as well on a bar on barbed wire. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (02:35.579)
Every tree's got lot of wood. Yeah. A lot of leaves. Oh, you know, not really. I'm being smug, but actually I did get a drone stuck up a tree last year at a wedding as well. I had to go and ask the wedding coordinator if he'd let me some step ladders to climb up the tree, hoping that no one would see me. I managed to knock it down with a monopole and surprisingly it still works, but it was only a mini three in my case.

Nick Church (02:52.761)
Yeah.

Nick Church (02:58.351)
Yeah, they're great. The mini threes are great because they're so light. They, I think even from dropping from a height, it's almost like that. don't really get enough energy up when they, when they hit the, the, hit the deck to actually cause that much damage. I've, you know, I've, I've, I've had issues with the mini three probe form. Absolutely fine.

Steve Vaughan (03:13.787)
So I'm going to buy you for Christmas, I'm going to buy you the Dumbbusters movie, 66633 Squadron. What are the other ones? What's the one with Mavrikin? The latest Top Gun? Yeah, we'll get you that. All of those movies. I'm going to get you some Biggles goggles as well.

Nick Church (03:24.803)
Top gun? Top gun, yeah. Like a box. Yeah, that's nice. It's nice that you're not making a big deal of it. That's the main thing, isn't it? Okay.

Steve Vaughan (03:36.675)
No, no, as if I would, as if I would. Let's start the show. Cue the intro.

So yeah, welcome to the photography pod. name is Steve Vaughan and my good mate Nick Church is here with me as well. I've been taking the mickey off for the last three or four minutes. So apart from crashing drones, Nick, how has your week been since we last spoke?

Nick Church (03:55.171)
Well, otherwise it's been great. The shoot was really good and yeah, it's been great and nice bit of a gap from weddings at the moment. still lots of Academy stuff going on. that's good to have time doing that. So yeah, yeah, really good. Enjoying my Fuji still. Been out to near Bath on a walk at the weekend, good sort two or three hour walk. So that was some, yeah, I got some lovely shots there as well. So yeah, all good. What about you?

Steve Vaughan (04:06.127)
Right. Good.

Steve Vaughan (04:11.407)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (04:15.653)
Cool.

Steve Vaughan (04:19.771)
We're going to talk Fuji a bit later because I've got something big, black and shiny on my desk. I'm going to show you a little bit as well. Yeah, but we went to that. Yeah, good. we're, um, wedding style for us properly in a couple of weeks. We've done a couple this year, but we've got a funny year. We've got sort of very spring and autumn loading this year. We've done a lot of pre-wedding shoots. did one with the son. I think I mentioned last week, I did one with my son. That was really, really quite strange to do a pre-wedding shoot of my son and his partner. And surprisingly they, they liked the photos, which is the...

Nick Church (04:24.521)
You say that to all the boys, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (04:49.359)
Which is a bit surprising as well. Yeah. So with my training business hat on, I'm getting ready to get to California in a couple of weeks. So assuming we're allowed in and they haven't sort of put the barriers up and, you know, and all the terrorists mean that we're, you know, banned from arriving in the United States. Hopefully that isn't the case, but yeah, you know, I'm off to California, all being well. And you put something in our Facebook.

Nick Church (04:49.721)
That's good.

Nick Church (04:56.559)
I know, right.

Nick Church (05:07.023)
Yeah, hopefully not.

that'd be nice.

Steve Vaughan (05:13.947)
group which we should let our listeners know about as well which I thought was a tremendous offer from our good friends at Evoto. Do you want to say a bit more about that?

Nick Church (05:21.495)
Yeah, sure. So Voto reached out to us and, cause we've mentioned them a couple of times on the pod as well. know we both, we both, rate the platform and, yeah, they've, they've given us an offer. There's a QR code where you can get, 30 credits. So just to explain again, how that works, Voto rather than being a one-off fee or a monthly subscription, you download the app, you register, and then you buy credits.

Every time you want to export a retouched image, which is great. Cause you can have a play with it. It's got watermarks on it, you know, but you can, you can see exactly what's going on. If you, once you got it right, only then do you export it and then, or, or, you know, save it. If you want to go back to Lightroom, if you're using that workflow and you use one of your credits. So that, yeah, it's 30 free credits. There's a QR code. Um, it's our link to it wherever, everywhere I can, which will be in the Facebook group. So again, encourage people to go and, um, join the Facebook group, the photography pod Facebook group.

Steve Vaughan (05:53.392)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (06:18.875)
which is called the photography podcast, surprisingly.

Nick Church (06:20.845)
Yeah. And the YouTube, I'll put it in the description of the YouTube version of this episode and also on the pod page for this episode and the previous one too.

Steve Vaughan (06:26.043)
great.

Steve Vaughan (06:30.843)
Great. And another reason to give Vivoto a good try. I find it very, very useful. I know we've said this several times on the show now, but it's a really useful either as a standalone app or as a plugin for Lightroom. It really does add an extra bit of dimension, a bit of AI help for those awkward situations really where you just want to get things done quickly. So time is money, as I like to tell people in my trading business. I did buy something the other week. I bought a new monitor. This would actually be of interest to our guests shortly when we introduce them as well. Because I bought a BenQ

Nick Church (06:47.511)
Agreed, agreed, yeah.

That's right.

Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (06:59.949)
monitor. So I want to know strange people that oscillate between a Mac and a PC. I have to use a PC for my sort of corporate training stuff I do. And I hate using it, but sometimes I have to use one. And I used to have a 40 inch curved Dell monitor, which took over the desk. It took over the whole room basically. you know, massive thing recommended to me by Kevin Mullins and it's a great monitor. I'm not going to slide it off too much. Yeah. Yeah. Really nice Thunderbolt monitor.

Nick Church (07:00.941)
Okay.

Nick Church (07:17.277)
wow.

Nick Church (07:21.549)
Yeah.

Is that like an ultra sharp thing? Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (07:29.573)
But the only issue I always had, and I'm really looking forward to speaking to our guest about this actually soon, trying to get color consistency from a Mac platform, then going into a Dell computer and a Dell screen, should I say. And even though I calibrated it as best I could towards what I thought was a Mac-similar color space, I just couldn't get it the same, really. So I read that BenQ had launched a new

5k monitor. So basically the scaling on the Mac would be the native retina as they call it and It took me a couple of days to get used to a smaller monitor, but now I've got it. I absolutely love it. It's a fantastic monitor. It's PD something 30 I put the link in the in the show notes is thousand pounds, but it's it's effectively I would think the same panel as the as the Studio monitor from Apple I would think it's because they're all made by LG or Samsung or somebody aren't but

Nick Church (08:22.147)
Yeah, sure.

Steve Vaughan (08:25.691)
you know, it looks exactly the same. So if I switch from here now to my Mac and then back again, the colors look exactly the same. So, you know, from an editing point of view, you get that consistency going through all the work. I mean, if people are looking on their phones as well, you know, just getting that sort of consistency is so important, I think really, and it's dead easy. I'm really, really pleased with it.

Nick Church (08:43.631)
I had the same very similar experience. I didn't have a huge one, but I did when I came to buy a second monitor setup, um, with a Mac book, I got an ultra sharp Dell and it was okay, but it was different and I could not get it the same as my, my, um, Mac book got my BenQ, which I've got now, which is it must be six or six years old now easily. And it's absolutely brilliant. It, it color matches with my calibration device exactly the same. Like you move an image from.

Steve Vaughan (08:57.785)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (09:05.85)
Mm.

Nick Church (09:13.079)
one to the other, it just, it's like a seamless thing. Really good. Because it's, it's matched with my iMac, which is like two and a half K or something. that, that, that resolution is matched pretty well. Yeah. If I, if I got a new machine, I would need to upgrade it to probably something similar to what you've got by the sound.

Steve Vaughan (09:14.052)
Yeah, so important.

Steve Vaughan (09:25.403)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if you use like a 4K monitor or something on a Mac, they don't really quite scale. It's all to do with the way that the scaling works on a Mac and it just looks slightly fuzzy. Whereas this looks, even with my not as perfect as I was, say to say getting older, it looks so sharp and really, really pleased with this. Anyway, that's a very clever segue for me to introduce or let you introduce our guest today, because our guest, believe, some

Nick Church (09:43.343)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (09:53.275)
links with BenQ looking at his website. But let me introduce you.

Nick Church (09:55.951)
Yeah, well, today we are delighted to have Francesco Gola from a fine art landscape photographer based in and around Milan. he's currently, you know, he's around sort of 20 miles in outside Milan in the countryside. He is best known for his long exposure seascapes, which we're going to see some later and we'll have the usual links in the show notes and so on.

which are, would say a masterclass in the genre of landscape photography. It's got a real ethereal quality to them and it's just really engaging viewing just to look through the images. So he's won multiple awards worldwide and he's a huge fan, not just of this podcast, but of Nutella. So that's the other important fact. And similarly as me, a big fan of Red Wine also. So Francesco, thank you so much for joining us.

Steve Vaughan (10:26.715)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (10:42.779)
It's all right in my book.

Nick Church (10:53.305)
today.

Francesco Gola (10:54.03)
Hey, hey Nick and Steve, thanks for inviting me. It's really, it's really an honor to be here.

Steve Vaughan (10:56.907)
It's great to have you here, sir.

Nick Church (10:57.013)
it's our pleasure. great. Thank you. Pleased to hear it. Francesco, would you like to give us a sort of bit of a background to your photography journey and how you've got to where you are today?

Steve Vaughan (11:00.379)
you

Francesco Gola (11:09.966)
Yeah, absolutely. I I will try to not to be too long. so basically, I'm Francesco from Italy and I have been working in photography for over 15 years now, let's say, and also for the past 10 years, I've also been involved in education. But let's say that this path again started quite a time ago. I can't say exactly how it started because...

is the typical thing that maybe you had the seed when you were young, probably my father had a camera or something like that. I remember when I was going on holiday with my parents, my father wanted to take all these kind pictures and I was really pissed off about that. I remember after a while, I think it was high school, I had my first holiday with friends and I decided to borrow this camera, this film camera from my father.

Steve Vaughan (11:38.661)
Yeah.

Nick Church (11:48.057)
Yeah.

Francesco Gola (12:02.45)
And I tried to shoot a thin roll and I clearly remember that it was like a disaster because not a single image was correctly taken, probably. Yeah, it was quite painful. so I decided to... So basically I decided to forget about photography for at least five or six years or even more. But then when I started to work after, because I graduated in engineering, so when I was young...

Steve Vaughan (12:12.277)
I'm full of it now.

Nick Church (12:15.247)
I'm there still.

Steve Vaughan (12:17.692)
Hahaha.

Steve Vaughan (12:30.596)
Francesco Gola (12:32.27)
my head was bumping into something and I decided to do engineering. I remember that when I working for the company I was working with, remember clearly that with the first paycheck I decided to buy a camera. At the time it was like a Canon 400D or something like that. I don't know if I can say the name of the brand here. So it's just for chronological thing.

Nick Church (12:56.173)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (12:56.438)
yeah, please do. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (13:00.83)
And then I fell in love with photography again, because I remember that company was moving me all around Italy. So when you're out from home, you don't have friends, maybe there, and so you have to find a way to spend your spare time. So I decided to try again with photography. And yeah, I definitely fell in love again with photography. But at the beginning, I started to...

to take pictures of everything, say from cats, dogs and landscape. But at the end, I think I understood that landscape was my cup of tea, my big thing. But let's I had a clique, I don't know if it's the right way to say it, but at a certain point, this company moved me to a very nice seaside location in the north of Italy. And then I fell in love with the sea.

So it was a mix of things because I grew up in the valley, so very far from the sea. And when I was a kid, of course, with my parents, I used to go to the seaside in summer. But yeah, you are a kid and you don't really understand much things. At least I didn't. But then when I was living there, I clearly remember that when after the day at work that it was like in a really industrial place. you are...

Steve Vaughan (14:10.981)
show.

Francesco Gola (14:23.288)
quite tired and the environment is not super nice. I decided to spend time in front of the sea. And then after some time, I decided to bring my camera with me when I was in front of the sea. And then everything came to me, came back to me because all the things that I've read about photography, all the books, all the picture also, everything I studied about photography came back to me. And then I decided to try to...

to experiment and so during this experimentation I found long exposure seascape photography. That is still my niche because it's something that I really love and yeah it's like the first love you never forget it and I'm still let's say married with this love.

Nick Church (15:13.743)
And what was it was your when you were at this stage and you were doing those first long exposure shots, is that still with your 400D or had you moved on to different system?

Francesco Gola (15:25.486)
Well, actually, it was with the 400D and I think that the first filter that I used was like an OIA 9 stop ND filter that was really horrible quality. mean, in terms of optical resolution, optical quality was really horrible. I remember a lot of color cast, but it was just fine because I remember that it was a way to relax for me because at that time, still now, but at that time in particular,

Steve Vaughan (15:35.323)
Mm.

Nick Church (15:35.695)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (15:54.892)
it was not that important the picture, mean the outcome, the final result, but it was really more important the way I was feeling there in front of the sea because yeah, I was trying to... And the idea that I was not rushing, so not taking hundreds of pictures, trying to catch the wave crashing on the rock, that is super nice, but the idea that I can leave the camera there with the shutter open for a few minutes.

Steve Vaughan (16:03.545)
process and the yeah.

Hmm

Francesco Gola (16:20.846)
And in the meantime, I could say enjoy the landscape, listening to music, reading even the book. It was super nice for me and really it contributed to, let's say, to make me love this kind of world.

Steve Vaughan (16:38.607)
So I grew up, Francesco, in the very center of England, probably as far from the sea as it's possible to get in our small island. when we moved to, my wife and I moved to live in America about 20 odd years ago with my job at the time, and we lived quite close to the sea then. And I know exactly what you mean. I got a massive kick about being able to go down to see the sea and to see water. So what is it for you then? Is it just that sort of relaxation, the openness? What is it about water and the sea that really

you know inspires you.

Francesco Gola (17:09.742)
Well, I'm not sure about this. mean, I'm still looking for an answer to this question because I really feel that the healing process, that the relaxing effect that the sea is giving to me, it was part of the everything. it became like, I don't know, really a meditative process.

Steve Vaughan (17:22.639)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (17:34.895)
Yeah.

Francesco Gola (17:35.936)
Every time I was there, it was like talking with the sea. I don't know how to explain without being like a crazy cat lady, but I was like really connected to the environment. was connected to the, I'm still connected to every place I'm visiting. And it's really, it was really the only place where I was able to forget about everything. Let's say every trouble at work, at home, with friends, with love. mean, when I was there,

Steve Vaughan (17:42.659)
No, get exactly what you mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (18:05.802)
It was just me and the sea. And that's great. think for me, the sea is still, but it was immediately at the time like a living person because, I mean, every day was changing every day. He had a different mood because one day super still and flat with nice color. The day after is stormy and is splashing waves in your face. So it was like really...

being in front of a living being, a creator. So to me, probably that was part of this fascinating effect that he had had on me that probably with other landscapes, it was not the same.

Steve Vaughan (18:49.061)
show.

Nick Church (18:50.543)
It does give you that sense. Don't you agree Steve, that when you're looking through these, you do feel that slowing down and you do feel that almost like you can sense Francesco's relaxed state when he was taking these. Totally, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:04.473)
I think the word is tranquility almost really, isn't it? Yeah. And for somebody who's always lived my life at a hundred miles an hour, I'm always looking for something to slow me down. And I can totally understand why that gives you that feeling, Francesco, that feeling of, yeah.

Nick Church (19:10.927)
Same.

Francesco Gola (19:17.218)
Yeah, I'd say that I was trying to... I mean, I'm still trying to make visible the invisible, because when you're in front of a landscape, of course, you have a kind of objective reality in front of you, because the lighthouse is there, the sun is there, the sky is there, that's an objective... It's not an opinion, it's an objective thing. But then I was trying to find a kind of technique in order to mix this reality with my feelings. So basically...

Steve Vaughan (19:24.773)
Mm.

Francesco Gola (19:45.728)
every picture that I'm publishing is not just, let's say, the postcard of the location, the representation of the reality of the place, but it's more what I was feeling in that moment, in that place. So it's a mix of things. And I feel that long exposure is really helping me on this process because again, with a long exposure, I mean, if you think about that when...

Steve Vaughan (20:00.218)
Hmm.

Francesco Gola (20:13.196)
You think about your senses, mean, the time is something that you can't perceive. mean, you can just look at the world in a fraction of a second. I mean, you can look at the instant reality and you never know what is happening on a long exposure. So every time I start with a long exposure of two minutes, okay, I know that this lighthouse would be in front of me, but it's impossible to understand what is going to happen.

during these two minutes and this is super magical to me. I mean, and then in post-production, of course, I try to enhance these feelings because of course, I mean, again, it's a mix of reality and emotion.

Steve Vaughan (20:58.651)
So I was going to ask what a long exposure is in your terms. it's two minutes plus, is that typically?

Francesco Gola (21:03.374)
Yeah, well, that's a very good question because I had a talk with a friend a few days ago and he told me that, for me, like to Sanco, it is a long exposure. for, actually it is, I mean, everything that is faster than your acquisition speed for your brain and vision system actually is formally a long exposure. to me, below 30 seconds, let's say it's more like photography hunting or it's like doing a safari.

Nick Church (21:14.251)
That's right.

Steve Vaughan (21:14.917)
Hahaha.

Francesco Gola (21:33.434)
So for me, the sweet spot is always around 2 minutes of exposure. But that is a kind of, again, a magical number and is more related to the effect that I get, more than something that I really want to achieve because I remember that I tried to go even to 16 minutes or, let's say, going crazy like that. But I feel that sometimes it's useless. Let's say that 2 minutes is the best...

I mean, for seascape photography, think that is one minute, two minutes, three minutes. That range is the perfect amount because after, I mean, when you reach two minutes, the sea is really super smooth, super flat. have this kind of silky effect without any crispy waves on the surface. But it's not too long in order to lose the details in the sky because if you think about a cloud that is moving in the sky,

Nick Church (22:18.713)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (22:28.91)
If you leave the shutter open for, let's say, 10 minutes, that cloud will move to left to right or right to left during the exposure and you will lose all the detail of that cloud. So you need to find a shutter speed that is compatible with the movement of the clouds, for example. And I mean...

Steve Vaughan (22:34.434)
Mm, of course,

Nick Church (22:34.989)
Yeah, completely smeared.

Nick Church (22:46.201)
But it, it's long enough, isn't it? To create this sense of, just slight, moving away from reality because it is a scene that you can't see with the naked eye. And, so I can, you're getting these in camera, but what, what's, when, when you are taking shots, we're, we're seeing now for the YouTube, people watching on YouTube, the, that length exposure, then presumably the actual shot is.

just the back end of a lot of planning and work. And that's just the sort of, you know, taking one, maybe, you know, handful of shots rather than scattering 200 photographs and picking the best one.

Francesco Gola (23:27.438)
Yeah, I'd say that planning is playing a very big role in my photography, but it was not like that in the beginning because again, for me, when I started, there were not much literature on that topic, on long exposure, on seascape long exposure, so it was more experimenting and experimenting. Plus, I'm coming from Italy, I'm in a valley, so even far from the sea, so I'm not really a sailor or an experienced mariner.

Let's say that when I started this kind of photography, I was going to the north coast of Italy and so into the Mediterranean Sea. And one of the aspects that you don't have there is the tide, for example. But I clearly remember the first time I visited the UK, because I'm really in love of UK, especially for, let's say, seascape photography, but not only.

I remember, I clearly remember that my first visit to the Outer Rebrides, I mean, I went there without knowing anything about tide and I remember that at the sunset I was there in front of this magnificent lighthouse that was Bath of Lewis and basically there was not much water in front of me and that was a super disappointment and so I started to understand that maybe...

you have to do something way before you go to visit a place. And so I started to learn how to plan. And basically now I can say that most of the time I spend for a single picture that you see published on my website or on my social media, let's say that 80 % of the time, no, let's not say 80, but 60, 70 % of the time.

is related to planning. Planning means have digital scouting, so checking the satellite images in order to understand way before you go there where it could be a nice spot where to go. Checking the ephemeris, so let's say the position of the sun or the moon, but in my case the sun, in order to know when is the best moment to go there in terms of having the sun at the right moment. Or of course the tide, because you have to go there at the right moment.

Steve Vaughan (25:18.811)
Hmm.

Nick Church (25:32.857)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (25:46.318)
during the right moment. And let's say finally the weather, because the weather is the, I mean, it's a super challenging topic because you, yeah, especially, but yeah, if you don't like the weather, you have just to wait five minutes in Scotland, as you know, so it's not a big thing. But in general, yeah, and the weather, yes. I don't want to say planning the weather because it's more, let's say, trying to understand the forecast, but...

Steve Vaughan (25:56.699)
Especially in the UK.

Steve Vaughan (26:04.869)
That's right. Yes.

Steve Vaughan (26:15.035)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (26:16.054)
also for that thing, I mean, I'm studying a lot of things and I'm trying to apply this kind of more theological knowledge to photography. What I have to say is that even if you, let's say, plan for 10,000 hours for a single picture, at the end in landscape photography and so also in seascape landscape photography, the end, nature is always in charge. So you can plan like for years and then...

Steve Vaughan (26:42.456)
Absolutely.

Francesco Gola (26:45.826)
that tiny cloud in front of the horizon line at the sunset on the day that you want to take the picture is maybe ruining everything or a super storm is coming to you. Well, that's part of the game, but I mean, it's fine.

Steve Vaughan (26:58.629)
part of game. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So when you say about planning, so you things like tie tables, I are using things like photo pills or something like that to look at the the sun time of the year and things like that.

Francesco Gola (27:06.528)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So I'm using several tools. Let's say, I mean, as an engineer, I try to split things in parts. So that's one of the downside of being engineer. so everything, when we talk about planning, I start always with digital scouting. So trying to understand, to get knowledge of the location way before going there. Because of course, you can check other photographer picture. You can check your best friend trip there. But I mean,

you have different eyes if you're a photographer. So you want to really get something unique or you want to explore a location. And for doing that, I'm using Google Earth because of course it's a free service and you can do in your laptop, in your mobile, in tablet, when you're in the office, in the subway. it's a nice way to spend your time and to start to travel even if you are in a place where you don't want to be.

Steve Vaughan (27:49.825)
Of yeah.

Steve Vaughan (28:03.182)
Mmm.

Francesco Gola (28:05.646)
And then the next step to me is understanding when is the best moment in terms of the position of the sun to go there. So I'm using PhotoPills. And my opinion is really a Swiss knife tool for photography because there are so many tools inside, but I'm using most the one related to the sun calculation. So with PhotoPills, I can check manually or I can even ask to the application

Steve Vaughan (28:16.63)
Okay.

Francesco Gola (28:35.256)
to tell me when the sun will be there at a specific direction. So it's really crazy what you can do now with this kind of tools.

Steve Vaughan (28:45.253)
it's a great app. We use it for weddings. Do you use it, at all?

Nick Church (28:48.149)
I use ephemeris.

Francesco Gola (28:48.706)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So. Yeah. So and that also.

Steve Vaughan (28:50.509)
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Just get an idea when the sun's gonna be going down and golden hour and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Church (28:58.038)
Francesco, how do you choose, so you talked about how you make sure you've got the perfect or your best attempt at trying to control the weather and tides. How do you choose your locations, you know, before that, what's the process for deciding where you're going to go?

Francesco Gola (29:13.55)
So, well, it's a bit complicated because of course when you decide to go to a place, either you live nearby or if the trip involves a flight, driving a ferry, I mean, it's not easy to decide at the really last minute. So maybe I have to decide to, if I want to go to the Outer Rebrides, of course I have to maybe book my flight ticket now, no? So I...

can't really know what will be the weather on mid-August there. So what I usually do is basically I try to understand the seasonal weather. So in order to understand when is the best moment of the year to go there in terms of weather. So when it's not super rainy or when you know that by statistics you get the right amount of cloud on a, again, on a statistical level.

And then, let's say, after that, I try to refine with the position of the sun, with the level of the tide, and so on. I decide to go to a specific location. So I identify an area, let's say, how the rebreathes are Scotland, the north of Scotland, or a wide area, let's say, not a single spot.

Nick Church (30:23.055)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (30:27.414)
And then my personal strategy is to find a place where to stay. If I'm not traveling by van, but let's say I rent a house because I want to stay cozy also when it's stormy outside and there is always stormy. Let's say I try to rent an apartment, a house with locals for a few weeks in the center of this area. And then let's say I have my planning so I know all the location.

Steve Vaughan (30:39.771)
Hmm.

Nick Church (30:41.606)
Mmm.

Francesco Gola (30:56.718)
around that area and for every location I know when is the best moment to go. So for a location maybe it's good to go at the sunrise, the other location is good with the high tide, the other one with the low tide, the one with the side light, the front light and these kind of things. So I have a kind of map and then every day before every shooting, so before the sunrise or before the sunset, I try to decrypt because it's like a cryptical thing, the weather.

in order to understand where I can have more chances. So let's say that on the north side it will be super windy or there will be a huge storm coming in, then maybe I will look for something on the east or the west side. So I always try to be in the center of the action in order to adapt to the situation because again, nature is in charge.

Nick Church (31:31.791)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (31:32.047)
Right.

Francesco Gola (31:54.772)
and you can only adapt but more you plan in advance more chances you have probably to succeed in the field because you can adapt to the terrain.

Steve Vaughan (31:56.43)
Absolutely.

Nick Church (32:01.506)
Yeah. Because this is always the problem with people like I've done before, and Francesco, as you must have done when you had another job, is that you don't have the luxury of deciding you're going to go to that place on that time. So we had a question from a listener, Josh, do you ever find yourself just having to go somewhere, let's say it's the outer Hepatitis?

Francesco Gola (32:16.513)
Absolutely.

Nick Church (32:29.439)
because you've booked the flight, you're there and the weather's not great and you just have to see what you can get. You just have to sort of, you know, dig a bit deeper and try and find, you know, think outside the box or, or, or would you just decide that, right? This, hasn't worked out in this particular project. So I'm going to go back.

Francesco Gola (32:45.752)
So, well, let's say that, I mean, in landscape photography, you know that you don't succeed every attempt. So maybe for every picture that you see on my... I mean, you set a personal line of tolerance, let's say, above this line, I will publish, below this line is not okay to me. So that's really a personal topic, point. And then when you go there, again, nature is in charge. So it can be really good or it can be really bad.

I clearly remember at the beginning that sometime the frustration was really super high. So I was going, I was spending a lot of money to go there. was planning for weeks, four months. Then I was going there in my only vacation week. mean, the only holiday, the only week of holiday that I had. And then the weather was really like a sun, no clouds or raining.

Steve Vaughan (33:24.335)
bit. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (33:42.382)
25 hours a day. I was like, and I remember that I was over frustrated. then, and this lead me almost to drop photography because I remember that after two or three trip in a row where everything was going wrong, I was starting to say, why let's do model picture or let's go back to take picture of dogs and cats. don't know. But then I really decided that I was in love.

with the sea and with the nature and even with the, the, the uncomfortable. So, I decided to switch to go in there to take a picture, to go in there to live an experience. So when you, when you switch that, I mean, that thing to the, you go there to live an experience. I mean, the picture is just a consequence. And if you did your planning in advance, so you know that you are there.

with your homework, doing everything in the right way. And then let's say there is really no chance to take a picture. You have just to enjoy the experience. You have just to explore a new area. Maybe that is your first time. You can just go to talk with locals. You can just enjoy a beer. You can visit a museum. And to me, mean, especially traveling to the north where the weather is, I mean, more challenging than maybe in Italy.

Steve Vaughan (34:56.047)
Have a nice walk, have a beer. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Nick Church (35:06.543)
Hmm.

Francesco Gola (35:07.938)
That was a must because otherwise if you go there with the idea, okay, I have five days, I need to go back home with four A-class pictures, I mean, it will never work and sooner or later you will drop everything. But again, if you enjoy the experience at a certain point, you will find that even in bad weather, in bad condition, you can find something nice. So for example, I started to love storms.

Nick Church (35:22.127)
Hmm.

Francesco Gola (35:35.628)
So most of my pictures that I feel for my, again, for my personal level, good picture, were taken not when the sunset was crazy with red colors, nice puffy clouds, but when I was under the rain in the storm, struggling not to have the filter covered by water. sometime you, maybe you change your vision and your idea while you are doing the process, but just...

Nick Church (36:04.071)
You've got on your website, an area that has your favorite pictures. I really like that. It's like, is my favorites as well. It's just the real headline shots. What would make the perfect shot for you then? Would that be more stormy weather, more dramatic?

Francesco Gola (36:09.633)
Yeah.

Francesco Gola (36:22.382)
I must say that if I have to pick to dramatic weather and super cool warm sunset I will pick the stormy weather right now because but not just because the picture is maybe technically perfect because actually it's quite the opposite because when you're under the rain with the wind blowing on you and with the snow because I mean if you go to Arctic Circle is even more challenging

Steve Vaughan (36:31.919)
Makes sense, yeah.

Francesco Gola (36:50.99)
when the weather is really crap maybe the picture has some imperfection but to me a picture to be perfect again it doesn't need to be like the perfect postcard of the location but it should capture really my feeling my sensation what I was feeling there so I mean it can be like even a sad moment you can be excitement it can be like the surprise of living in this crazy world but

Again, it should be the reality mixed with your feelings. And when I'm able to do that, and I know immediately when I see in the back screen of my camera, then I say, okay, that's a good picture because it's telling me something. It's telling me the story that I was living there. It's telling me it's like writing with light, just to be poetic, it's just writing with light the feeling that I was living in that specific moment.

Nick Church (37:49.293)
And that's the thing with all photographers of all genres, when you see the back of the camera, whether it was a wedding or a set of spanners, and you think, wow, that's an absolute banging photo. There's nothing like it. That's why we do it, isn't it? That feeling of it is just the best.

Steve Vaughan (37:57.115)
I just wanted to go back to your website actually, first of all, we will link to it in the show notes, but you've got some tremendous workshops and just tremendous useful information on there as well. But you also have a significant number of ambassadorships and relationships, including Ben Q, as we were mentioning earlier.

Francesco Gola (38:22.945)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (38:23.515)
and also the color calibration company as well. So what does come across in all your images is the consistency of the editing and the consistency of the way you've approached it. So just say a few things about that, would you, in terms of how important that is to you in the post-process, on site of things.

Francesco Gola (38:41.12)
Yeah, so thanks for the question because now, mean, color consistency of colors in general is really a topic I'm into. And I was laughing before at the beginning because I just received today is behind the webcam, the monitor that you are using. So the new BenQ. So yeah, I can't wait. I couldn't turn it on now because I had to prepare the setup for tonight. But yeah, I can't wait to go there and play with it.

Steve Vaughan (38:58.071)
All right, you'll love it.

Steve Vaughan (39:03.909)
You

Yeah, you'll love it. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (39:08.376)
But yeah, let's say that as you can see in my website, I mean, there is a blog section where you can find a lot of articles. Most of them are related to, let's say, color, calibration, the importance of having a calibrated monitor. Because now with that blog in my website, I'm trying to give back something to the community. Let's say that during this 15-plus year of photography, I always try to learn new things.

Steve Vaughan (39:16.027)
Mm.

Francesco Gola (39:36.809)
But I don't want to be, let's say, greedy. I really want to share what I learned because for me it was super, I mean, was a struggle to learn everything by my own from how to use the filter because, mean, you can find, at the time you could find books on how to use a camera, of course, but it was a bit more complicated on finding articles on how to use, let's say, the filters, how to properly calibrate your monitor. So now I'm trying to do that thing. And I mean,

Steve Vaughan (39:40.857)
Yeah, great.

Francesco Gola (40:05.9)
With long exposure photography, thing that you will notice immediately, of course, is the fact that all the colors of the picture are somehow, let's say, I don't want to say over-saturated in my picture, but let's say the color are really vibrant because in my opinion, they are part of the composition. So I started first to learn how the colors interact together. So I started to study color theory. That is one of my favorite topic.

Steve Vaughan (40:19.385)
Mm.

Nick Church (40:23.427)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (40:32.402)
And then after understanding how the color works, I tried to understand how to be sure that what I was seeing on my screen was really what everyone can see from a computer connected maybe hundreds of miles away or just having the same colors in my laptop and in my main screen that I use for printing.

to me, color is absolutely, mean, color management and color consistency is absolutely mandatory for every photographer, not just for, let's say, landscape photographer, because it's the really last mile, it's really the last step, because let's say that you spend so much money on your gear, investing in your education, then buying, let's say, a flight ticket for the other side of the world, you take an amazing picture, because you were so lucky to get...

Steve Vaughan (41:11.109)
Totally agree.

Francesco Gola (41:30.294)
nature in love with you that day and then you go back home and you let's say you work that picture you edit on that picture in an uncalibrated monitor, unprofiled monitor and then you publish or even or you print your picture and then you will give I mean if you want to share that thing with somebody else I mean you will be disappointed at the end if somebody else is looking at your picture in a way

Nick Church (41:47.608)
Okay.

Francesco Gola (41:58.638)
I mean, differently from what you wanted to show. So it's so easy nowadays to have your monitor, let's say, properly profiled and calibrated. So why not to invest a few pounds or just a few minutes in doing this process and to be sure that...

Steve Vaughan (42:11.438)
It is.

Nick Church (42:18.095)
Yeah, it seems, it seems almost like a pre prerequisite to be a photographer is to, is to understand your colors and to understand that what you're seeing on your monitor is accurate color. And I'm amazed that I still find working photographers that don't have a calibration set up. And I've got no clue how they, I would just go down an absolute rabbit hole of sending images to my phone, then to an iPad and

Steve Vaughan (42:38.457)
Yeah, completely.

Nick Church (42:46.701)
never known, if you know it's right, you don't care because everyone, even if someone's looking on a phone that's really warm, their eyes are calibrated and the worst thing you can do is then try and correct it for a particular device because in their eyes, it looks too cool if they're to a warmer image. Francesca, do you mind if we talk through this image that we've got on here? We'll come onto the post-processing as well. Would you mind talking us through your process for

Steve Vaughan (42:58.821)
Yeah.

Francesco Gola (43:04.216)
Yeah.

Francesco Gola (43:11.726)
Okay.

Nick Church (43:16.483)
capturing this in camera. What is your camera setup these days, for example?

Francesco Gola (43:22.51)
So this picture was taken a few years ago and if I'm not wrong, was shooting with a Canon 5D Mark I or II, I mean quite old camera actually, the set up, mean a sturdy tripod of course, and here I was using a polarizer in order to, let's say, remove the reflection in the surface of the water. I mean, if you have to pick one filter.

Steve Vaughan (43:35.045)
Gosh. Okay. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (43:51.278)
For me, would be the polarizer. Then I was using a 10 stop ND filter in order to extend the shutter speed. And then a graduated filter, GND filter. was a hard grad, three stops. I'm pretty sure because it was my favorite filter. And this is...

Nick Church (44:11.863)
And how do you say you would go for doing it that way and getting the difference in the sky and the the seat correct is possibly in camera then rather than using any.

Francesco Gola (44:23.486)
Absolutely, yeah, that's a very good point and sorry for not specifying it before. So all the pictures that you can see, I mean, from the really beginning to now, all my pictures are a single exposure. it's not... Yeah, I mean...

Nick Church (44:35.023)
That was my next question. was wondering whether we had what's so you're not even focused stacking or you will be focused. Wow.

Francesco Gola (44:40.43)
No, never, because... So the reason of that is just at the beginning, I was really lazy, I didn't want to learn how to do that. And then while doing the hard job in the field, I fell in love with the process. So I understood that for me at least, it's a super subjective thing, but at least for me, it was way more fun to spend hours in the field under the rain, struggling with the filter, cleaning, having...

Nick Church (44:49.359)
You

Steve Vaughan (44:50.075)
you

Nick Church (45:07.746)
you

Francesco Gola (45:08.94)
It was a struggle, but at the end, you were able to get a nice result, mean, you were over-excited and to me it's even better.

Steve Vaughan (45:17.817)
So just so I've got it right in my head then. we're in front of this lighthouse here, obviously on a tripod. So you're going to pick a polarizing and pick a grad and also an ND filter. You would never use a variable ND, for example, it's always a fixed ND.

Francesco Gola (45:24.131)
Yeah?

Francesco Gola (45:35.886)
Yeah, so let's say that, I mean, the real process to take this picture, it was like, okay, a lot of planning because, mean, here, of course, the weather, I mean, you see, the weather is not cooperating. Let's say you have this kind of mid cloud layer that usually is blocking the light, is creating this kind of dark experiences. But yeah, it was still not super raining, so it was good. So I decided to go there. And of course, I spent...

Steve Vaughan (45:58.116)
Right.

Francesco Gola (46:02.834)
I mean, was not the first time I was within that light house, so was quite expert of the location, but in any case, I was, I suggest always to spend some time in like scouting because you did the digital scouting, but then when you're there, you need to do the real scouting, real life scouting. And then I wanted to find a...

composition where I could highlight even more the fact that I was there, really had a high tide, because this was a super high tide, it was like a spring tide. And I say that because in this specific tide, you can get really the lighthouse on this tiny highland, because there is this kind of bridge. Otherwise, when the tide is quite lower...

You can really see a lot of rocks. It's nice, but in my opinion not that nice. So the first thing was going there at the right place.

Nick Church (46:51.617)
Yeah, no, it certainly makes it. It certainly adds to it, doesn't it? That you've got the isolation somehow of that, of that structure. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (46:57.526)
Yeah, exactly. I was trying to, I mean, it's a strange composition because it's like placing the subject in the center and having like a kind of vertical symmetry. like, it was a challenge because usually it will never work a composition like that, but sometime it's working. And in my opinion, I was lucky and is working also for, let's say the, I mean, the kind of leading lines that you get in the water, thanks to the long exposure.

Steve Vaughan (47:05.367)
It works out works really well.

Steve Vaughan (47:11.579)
Mm.

Yeah, I love it.

Steve Vaughan (47:25.893)
Yep. Yep.

Nick Church (47:26.511)
Mmm.

Francesco Gola (47:27.064)
So after placing the camera on the tripod, I refined my composition. Then I installed the... First of all, I used the polarizer in order to get rid of the reflection, especially in the foreground. I mean, the foreground in the middle ground because I wanted to remove the reflection in the sea. Then I started to place the Grad Filter, the GND 3-stop, and I aligned it in order to be aligned with the horizon line.

Nick Church (47:43.14)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (47:54.56)
even covering a bit of the light hours and that's a side effect, but I knew that in post-production with just a brush in Lightroom, I was able to open the shadow. And then I decided to extend the shutter speed to, in this specific case, it was three minutes. And this sent us back to the shutter speed that we were discussing before, because I told you that my sweet spot was two minutes, but it's adjustable according to the situation. So for example, here,

Nick Church (47:58.197)
Mmm, sure. Yup.

Steve Vaughan (48:00.731)
With a brush,

Francesco Gola (48:24.33)
It's a kind of standard that would say that when you have a mid-cloud layer, they are moving quite slowly. I mean, they are not as fast as the low clouds. in order to get some movement in the cloud to have this kind of, I call it the blanket effect because it's like having a blanket that is moving, you need to go a bit higher than two minutes. And here, for example, it was three minutes. So I...

Nick Church (48:32.001)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (48:43.414)
Mm-hmm.

Francesco Gola (48:51.862)
I wanted to reach something above 3 minutes. So with the available light, because I was way before the sunset, because when you have bad weather, you can't really go any time of the day to take pictures, the light was quite intense and to reach the 3 minute exposure, I had to use the 10 stop ND filter. So I was using PhotoPills again because there is this kind of nice feature that you can, let's say...

tell the app what is the shutter speed without any filter and then it's kind of it's recommending the filter to use to reach.

Nick Church (49:27.138)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (49:27.835)
Oh yeah, I've never done that. That's good to know.

Nick Church (49:30.699)
I'm always, if I ever do, is very rare, anything like this, then I'm always just taking a test shot without the filter and then just math, try to mathematically work out what my shutter speed needs to be. Yeah, but three minutes when you've got a fairly narrow window where the light is just as you want it, you can't take many three minute trial runs, can you, before you run it.

Steve Vaughan (49:42.171)
Yeah.

Francesco Gola (49:42.616)
I'm lazy. Yeah, I'm lazy.

Francesco Gola (49:52.626)
That's a point. That's a very good point. In a situation like this, having many three minutes is not a big thing because the weather was really flat, let's say. It was not a supercell that was coming, bringing... I remember that before, you showcased one of my pictures at the same lighthouse with a supercell coming in, and that was a totally different situation.

because you know that this kind of thunderstorm cells are moving fast and you have to take the picture. But in this case, mean, the sky was super flat. I think I took like more than 30 minutes of exposures, three minutes by three minutes, because at the beginning, the lighthouse was off, the light was off. So I really wanted to have the light on on the lighthouse because...

This picture, I I love to give a name to the picture. So this one is called Polyphemus. I hope it's the correct pronunciation because it is like a cyclops and it's like having an eye that is looking at you. and this was, this picture was the beginning of my lighthouse project because usually at the beginning I always tend to avoid.

Steve Vaughan (50:59.035)
Oh, I see what mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (51:15.022)
let's say humans in my pictures and also it's a human artifact. But then with the lighthouse was different because I mean, when I was in front of the lighthouses, it was like being in front of a real person. So it was like having a conversation with the personification of the sea. was like having the sea in front of me that was talking to me. I mean, this is like after a lot of wine probably.

Nick Church (51:41.327)
You

Steve Vaughan (51:41.659)
You

Francesco Gola (51:44.014)
Yeah, exactly. So this is exactly the same lighthouse from a lower position, same height height, a bit more wavy. And you see that on the background, on the other side of the lighthouse, there was this kind of supercell that was coming with some rain coming in. And here you know that you don't have like an half an hour because you know that in 15 minutes you will be completely soaked.

Nick Church (51:44.148)
Is this the image? Is this the other one?

Steve Vaughan (51:48.677)
fantastic image. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (52:03.61)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (52:10.127)
You were soaking, yeah.

Francesco Gola (52:11.106)
Yeah, so in this moment, it's really like you have to decide if you want to go home dry or if you want to try to bring home a nice picture. So of course, I always go for the second. And the year was like a couple of minutes just because I wanted to have more and more chances because I mean, two and two minutes is better than three and three and three. So you have more attempt.

Nick Church (52:39.087)
Steve Vaughan (52:39.131)
Absolutely.

Francesco Gola (52:39.519)
And also because the cloud was really, really moving fast. Also, with two Minos, you are kind of losing some details, but you still have the effect of this kind of beast that is moving to you because, yeah, it's...

Nick Church (52:53.261)
Yeah. Cause I guess if you were doing a, you know, my default thing would be, I'd be thinking, let me make, if I'm going to a location like this, I'll make sure I get everything I need. So I'm thinking, well, I'm going to bracket my exposures. I'm going to focus stack all of those, but then you're looking at 20 minutes of images to try and put together. And that sky has just gone completely. As now over that time is there is no notice.

Steve Vaughan (53:13.242)
yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (53:14.476)
Yeah, that's one of the reasons also after, I mean, after a few years, I decided to learn how to blend picture, to focus talking. And so actually now I know how to do that, but I still prefer to have a single exposure because I mean, it's an act of fate to yourself because you need really, when you know that is really the right moment. I mean, I think is to take hundreds of picture of a fraction of a second. You know that if you miss the focus, you can...

take it right in the next picture and so on. But when you know that you have just maybe one attempt or two attempt, you really need to, you really have to trust yourself because you need to be sure that the focus was right, the composition was okay, the filter was properly set, the polarization. So everything have to work in the right way. At the beginning is like anxiety level 100, but after a while you feel confident and...

Nick Church (53:48.911)
Hmm.

Nick Church (54:05.433)
You

Steve Vaughan (54:07.899)
Well, that's experience, isn't it really? that, yeah, yeah.

Francesco Gola (54:09.102)
Yeah, I mean, the experience here is playing a role, but it...

Nick Church (54:09.775)
So you're a tech geek, an engineering geek like I am and Steve's a tech geek as well from a scientist side. So with that in mind, are you at this point in your experience with your focusing, are you still doing sort of hyperfocal calculations or are you now able to sort of get it right just in your head?

Steve Vaughan (54:17.659)
I'm a scientist.

Francesco Gola (54:34.478)
Well now I'm let's say I'm cheating because I'm using right now I'm using a fushifilm camera so is a GFX 100s because I love printing quite big and that camera helps me also the sensor is crazy but basically with fushifilm camera you can have like a kind of digital scale that tell you the the hyperfocal distance and it's working really really great so I don't have to do that anymore

Steve Vaughan (54:56.635)
Yeah, I can,

Francesco Gola (55:02.232)
But yeah, I'm always working with the hyperfocal distance. So I'm focusing at that distance where you know that the depth of field is the best for that combination of aperture and focal length. So it's really one second. But even when I was working with my previous camera, that was an Nikon D850, yeah, I was always trying to have the hyperfocal distance. If I was using a prime lens, I was relying on the

sign on the barrel or I was like somehow estimating that distance with some tricks or I was also using a photo piece again because there is a kind of augmented reality that tell you where to focus for

Nick Church (55:46.883)
Because your use of foreground interest is very prominent in your work and that's so important to get that sharp with your work.

Steve Vaughan (55:51.01)
And very much so. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (55:53.74)
Yeah, I I think that the foreground is always super important. mean, I have many pictures without a foreground, but I feel that the foreground most of the time is part of the story. It's like a framing, and it's giving me not only, let's say, a subject, for example, flowers or something like that, but a lot of leading lines. So for example, use, most of my pictures, I use the foreground as an entry point for the eye in order to lead the...

the attention to the domain subject. And the trick here for me is not to go too close. For example, even if I have flowers, I really don't want to have like the huge flower in the foreground for a few reasons. The first one is that I have to focus stack 100%. And I don't want to do that. And with long exposure, focus stacking is a big topic. So it's better to avoid that.

Nick Church (56:25.935)
Mm.

Nick Church (56:42.53)
Yeah.

Francesco Gola (56:50.478)
And also because I'm mostly taking my picture with wide-angle lenses. So let's say my sweet spot is between 18 millimeter to 21 millimeter. And you know when you use long, I mean wide-angle lenses, what is close to you, it will be bigger. And what is far from you will be smaller. So for example, in the picture that we are looking at now, I I love the fact that we have flowers in the foreground.

Steve Vaughan (57:11.481)
Yeah, absolutely.

Francesco Gola (57:17.742)
But of course I don't want them to be dominant, I want to still have the lighthouse as the main subject and the storm that is coming in. that's a personal taste in composition, course. It's not the right thing to do, it's just the thing that I love to do.

Nick Church (57:26.959)
huh.

Nick Church (57:40.047)
This one's a good example as well, which doesn't have a fork on interest like most of them. But what I love about your work is that you're not at all afraid for big areas of negative space and, and to use it.

Francesco Gola (57:51.648)
Exactly. So negative space, I think that the most complicated part in photography, I for landscape photography is, let's say learning about composition because I composition it require really like trying and studying and mean failing, let's Let's say that I love to use negative space. Sometimes I can do, mean when I have really a nice subject, I have

I tend to use negative space to even more highlight that subject. So for example, the picture that we were checking before, the lighthouse, was a picture taken in France, it's the Petimino lighthouse, it's a beautiful one. Actually, the original picture was taken with the foreground, and because I thought that it was nice to have this kind of...

reddish vegetation because it was autumn as a foreground and again using leading lines. But at the end, I decided to crop it and thanks to the 100 megapixel of the GFX, was not a big thing to do. Yeah, was not a problem. So I decided to have two versions, to try two versions. And let's say after looking at the two different versions after a week or so, I decided that...

Steve Vaughan (59:02.393)
Not a problem.

Nick Church (59:03.353)
haha

Francesco Gola (59:15.438)
Let's say the one without the foreground was the best because it was like even more emphasizing the presence of the lighthouse with the storm coming in.

Steve Vaughan (59:27.301)
Francesco, I've got a couple of final questions if I may. We could talk for hours. No, not at all. It's fascinating and the images are so great and just listening to your process. But I want to come back to sort of location. just two questions if I may. What's your favorite location you've ever photographed in? And the second question is, if there's anywhere in the world that you haven't photographed yet but you'd like to, what would that be?

Nick Church (59:31.295)
couldn't we ever, couldn't we ever. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (59:32.012)
I'm sorry.

Francesco Gola (59:38.904)
Thank you.

Francesco Gola (59:54.446)
Yeah, OK, so very. So first of all, I'm sorry if I'm talking too much because when we start, when I start to talk about my photo, so let's say my favorite location, I really don't know because I mean my favorite location is the sea. That's the real answer because some question could be, but why don't you take a picture on mountains on hills? You go to Tuscany, you're living in Italy. There are so many good things to take pictures of.

Steve Vaughan (01:00:00.173)
Not at all. no, not at all. No, no, it's fascinating. No. It's great.

Nick Church (01:00:03.821)
That was great.

Steve Vaughan (01:00:11.963)
Well, yes, of course, yeah.

Francesco Gola (01:00:23.694)
But yeah, my favorite location is the sea. because again of that feeling, that vibe that I get when I'm in front of the sea. So I am really in love with the coast of France, the lighthouse coast of France, that is Brittany. And I'm in love with the UK because from south to north, mean, every year I think I'm coming to the UK at least two times. And for example, well, this year I already came once.

Steve Vaughan (01:00:38.821)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:00:47.79)
All right.

Francesco Gola (01:00:52.686)
beginning of the year, then in summer I will be again and again in the outer ridges. So let's say that the north of France plus the whole UK, let's say they are some in my special location. And in terms of, I mean, the location that I want to visit before I die, well, there are so many and let's say that now I'm really focused on what I call the cold water. So I really like this.

Steve Vaughan (01:00:59.813)
amazing place.

Steve Vaughan (01:01:05.711)
Especially Scotland though, yeah. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (01:01:20.61)
kind of European coastlines from north of France to the fort and so to Norway. But I really want to explore also warmer waters. I don't know what it's like to be taking long exposure at Hawaii or I don't know in any other exotic location. I don't know.

Steve Vaughan (01:01:42.393)
It's to find out.

Francesco Gola (01:01:47.47)
I have to pick my next dream location, probably will be Antarctica. But for different reasons, the first one is that unfortunately I don't know for how long we have this kind of mass of glaciers. And the second one, because it will be a completely new challenge, because it's not something new to go there. Nowadays, thanks to technology, it's not like being in Chacletown going there for the first time.

Steve Vaughan (01:01:52.591)
Wow, yeah, that would be incredible.

Steve Vaughan (01:02:00.493)
Of course,

Nick Church (01:02:01.903)
That's right.

Francesco Gola (01:02:16.174)
But still taking a long exposure in Antarctica, I still feel that is a challenge because you have ice that is floating, not so many subjects and penguins that are not going to cooperate. I think...

Nick Church (01:02:31.759)
I'm very curious and not at all scared of humans. yeah, right in front of camera. I'll be, we often do a book review here, but this isn't, this isn't, um, photography related at all, particularly, but I've just finished, um, the, the, book about the discovering the endurance, trying to find the endurance ship. Fascinating. Yeah. I'm, as Steve knows, I'm obsessed with Antarctica as well. So it's my.

Steve Vaughan (01:02:36.251)
It would be fantastic to find out wouldn't it? Yeah, so

Francesco Gola (01:02:38.377)
Yeah, let's see.

Francesco Gola (01:02:52.094)
wow, yeah it's a...

Steve Vaughan (01:02:52.188)
have you? well, I bet. Yeah. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (01:02:58.058)
I'm obsessed with this kind of historical fact so yeah I mean

Steve Vaughan (01:03:01.211)
We should all go guys. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll organize a trip. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I already am probably, but still Francesca has been fantastic having you on. We can literally listen to you for hours. It's been, it's been, it's been great. Um, you know,

Nick Church (01:03:01.741)
Yeah, yeah, we should. We should. I want to do it before I get too old.

Nick Church (01:03:15.447)
I think we should get Francesca back on at some point,

Steve Vaughan (01:03:18.201)
I think we should, yeah. And next time in the UK, of course, we should definitely meet up for beer as well or a glass of red vino. But we will link to your website and to your fantastic resources on there as well. But I guess you're also on social media, Instagram, Facebook, that kind of stuff.

Francesco Gola (01:03:19.374)
I hope.

Can't wait.

Francesco Gola (01:03:33.44)
Yeah, let's say that my website is my home. So if you want to see a picture in high resolution, blog articles, workshop, or if you just want to contact me, it's the best way to do that. You can find me on Instagram, mainly on Instagram. so it's my Francesco Gola without any space and you will find me. So when you see over colored, long exposure.

Steve Vaughan (01:03:37.924)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (01:03:44.687)
make this resource, it really is.

Steve Vaughan (01:03:55.365)
Brilliant.

Fantastic.

Nick Church (01:03:58.743)
And on Francesco's websites, apart from being able see all the beautiful pictures we've seen today, there are the, I had loads of questions about your workshops. haven't come to, so there are some workshops in the House of Hepridies and all over some of the regions we've seen. You can join a workshop and I'm guessing they're pretty popular because there's a few spaces left, but you need to get in early on these workshops. Also there's Francesco's prints as well, so you can get any of these pictures.

Steve Vaughan (01:04:19.481)
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to do them, you know.

Francesco Gola (01:04:21.058)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Church (01:04:26.689)
in a A3 size on amazing quality signed print for like 100 quid. It's just incredible. So this is something that I'm going to be definitely putting on my Christmas list on my birthday this year. All right. Thank you, Francesco.

Steve Vaughan (01:04:37.997)
Yeah, me too. me too. Yeah, great stuff. and feel free to hang around. We're gonna, you know, we'll wrap up the show in a few minutes, but feel free to stay with us because you've, you've referenced something that I wanted to talk about. So Nick, you and I use Sony cameras professionally, yes. But you've bought a Fujifilm camera for fun, but you've gone down a little bit in terms of sensor size. So I thought I would.

Francesco Gola (01:04:38.936)
Thank you, thank you guys. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

Francesco Gola (01:04:49.024)
Absolutely.

Nick Church (01:04:57.089)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Church (01:05:01.636)
Yes.

Steve Vaughan (01:05:06.735)
go one over you. So I'm going to go a little bit bigger. So Francesco, you recognize that? That's a GFX. Woohoo!

Nick Church (01:05:10.531)
Look

Francesco Gola (01:05:13.684)
Yes, that's a big boy.

Steve Vaughan (01:05:15.931)
It's a GFX 100S Mark II. I would love to say it's mine, but it's not. So I've got it with a 45mm f2.8 and in the UK they have a fantastic scheme through the House of Photography where obviously you have to put a deposit down, but basically you can try any of the Fujifilm cameras free.

Francesco Gola (01:05:18.604)
Yeah, that's why I'm jealous because I have the Mark 1.

Steve Vaughan (01:05:40.791)
So I've got a five and a half thousand pound camera here on my desk for the Easter weekend. And we're going down to the South coast actually. So I might, I might see if I can indulge me, my inner Francesco in me so I can find something remotely interesting like photograph, but in all seriousness, I'll just, I'll just fancy having a play with it. And it's, it's apart from putting in two and a half grand on my credit card security deposit, it's cost me nothing. It's incredible. Isn't it? Yeah.

Francesco Gola (01:05:47.536)
Ooh, can't wait for...

Francesco Gola (01:05:52.856)
Please.

Nick Church (01:05:55.31)
I to play my-

Nick Church (01:06:02.319)
Amazing.

Francesco Gola (01:06:03.534)
Yeah, that's a good service. We don't have it in Italy, unfortunately, but next time I'm coming to the UK for sure I I will take it back.

Steve Vaughan (01:06:09.829)
Well, so I used to use Fujifilm cameras professionally and the community here is very strong and they have, of course, the HESA photography in London, which is their showroom. if you go on their website, so there's a waiting list for the GFX RF, of course, the new one. But yeah, all the X series stuff. if you fancy trying a different lens out, Nick, for your new shiny X-T5, you can borrow one for a weekend free and they ship it to you and ship it back. It's amazing.

Francesco Gola (01:06:24.91)
K, man.

Nick Church (01:06:35.983)
been, yeah, I'll definitely look into that. I'm almost don't want to even hold that what you've got because I can't justify going down a full, a medium format rabbit hole.

Steve Vaughan (01:06:49.209)
What got me Francesco, because you carry this thing around all the time, but it's actually, yes you know you've got a solid piece of equipment in there, but it's not as big and heavy as I expected. I mean it's not that much bigger and heavier than a DSLR really.

Francesco Gola (01:06:58.99)
Absolutely, actually. No, no, no. When I was moving from my D850 to something else, I was testing different camera and one, of course, of my... I I wanted to check also the weight and the size, but I was... Sorry. I was used to the D850 that is almost the same size and the same weight. I mean, if you're using, let's say, a regular, let's full frame mirrorless camera, of course, it's a bit smaller, probably.

Nick Church (01:07:00.279)
It's not that much bigger, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:07:17.943)
Hmm. I bet it is. Yeah.

Nick Church (01:07:21.039)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (01:07:27.705)
Yeah, that's what we normally use. Yeah.

Francesco Gola (01:07:28.62)
But I was also compare, there is an article on my blog, of course, but it's called my first six months with the Fuji GFX. And basically there is also a comparison with the Z8, the Nikon Z8, and basically it's absolutely the same weight, actually it's even more heavy. I mean, few millimeters smaller, few inches more, but I mean, it's not that big thing. I mean, it's not like carrying like,

Steve Vaughan (01:07:37.7)
Nick Church (01:07:46.745)
That's it.

Steve Vaughan (01:07:47.395)
Wow, that's amazing.

Francesco Gola (01:07:59.296)
and then the logical back or something like that.

Steve Vaughan (01:08:00.667)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that should get you an ambassadorship with Fujifilm for that, I'm sure. So no, we're not serious. It's just just have a bit of fun. You know, no need for a GFX camera in the work I do possibly when we finish doing weddings for me, who knows, but just look forward to playing with some different for a weekend. Yeah.

Nick Church (01:08:01.24)
Yeah, yeah.

Francesco Gola (01:08:05.388)
Yeah I will laugh but... Let's see

Nick Church (01:08:19.967)
Absolutely. And other stuff. So you've been, you've been busy trying the new medium format camera. I noticed that it looks like Sonya are pulling some more lenses from sale in term and with rumors around tariffs and it being sort of sold as just a supply issue. and it's, also noticed that Blackmagic have been the first camera manufacturer that have

officially increased the prices through tariffs. so they're one of the, obviously the video bodies has gone from $5k to $6.8k. So they've, they've really hiked it up. other news that I noticed was that, you know, we talked about the BF, the Sigma BF last week. They're really struggling. That's either, again, there is a slight sniff of a rumor about being a tariff related thing, but

Steve Vaughan (01:08:51.666)
they have, that's interesting.

Steve Vaughan (01:09:00.043)
Wow.

Steve Vaughan (01:09:08.731)
Mmm.

Nick Church (01:09:17.313)
I think they are absolutely inundated with orders for that. And I think it's a bit like the X hundred six, you know, the, future film that it's just always going be on back orders that they just can't keep up with demand for that, for that little camera right now. So yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:09:24.432)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:09:29.262)
Yeah. It's certainly a cool little thing and I've been interested to see how they do with it really. So yeah, I mean, we're obviously in uncharted waters. Who knows what's going to happen in the next few weeks. Nobody knows, least of all, suspect his orange highness in the States really, without getting into politics too much, who knows what's around the corner. It's a strange time to be in business certainly, but we'll find out I guess in the weeks and months to come, certainly.

Nick Church (01:09:43.983)
Exactly.

Nick Church (01:09:54.211)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:09:56.995)
So what else install for you in the next couple of weeks, Nick, before we wrap up?

Nick Church (01:10:00.419)
Well, just ramping back into weddings and the Academy has got a launch date now it's the Nick Church Creative Academy launch date of 31st of May. So that is going to be the first online courses will be available through there. Plus all of my existing one-to-one coaching will be through there as well.

Steve Vaughan (01:10:16.123)
Fantastic.

Nick Church (01:10:19.311)
It's an absolute ton of work and you know, this, this idea of starting a Patreon, which was how it started, escalated badly. So although it is just the most exciting thing, I love it. And I'm really keen to get that, you know, get it launched and get people signed up to that. There's really good numbers of the pre-launch signup. So we're looking at about 600 people now that are interested in getting on board. So yeah, yeah, good stuff.

Steve Vaughan (01:10:24.385)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (01:10:43.483)
Yeah, great. news. Yeah. More power to your elbow. I'm sure it's going to be a great resource for people, certainly. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. So, okay. Shall we wrap it up then, guys? Partly because my wife's calling me because she probably wants picking up from work. My football team's playing on the Champions League, but on the telly to the side of me right now as well. So I better keep an eye on that as well. Although the banter is I'm an Aston Villa supporter from a sense. But in all seriousness, thank you again, Francesco. It'd be great to have you with us again. And Nick and I, we're back with another guest in a couple of weeks time.

Nick Church (01:10:46.863)
Thank you. Yeah.

Nick Church (01:10:51.299)
I reckon.

Nick Church (01:11:04.898)
Absolutely.

Francesco Gola (01:11:06.2)
Thanks to you guys, it was absolutely a pleasure.

Steve Vaughan (01:11:11.405)
If you do like the show, don't forget to give us a review on Apple. And I think you can now in Spotify as well. We'd be very, very grateful if you did so. And of course, any feedback you want to give us at all, there is an email address for the show, which is nickremindme.

Nick Church (01:11:23.873)
studio at the photography pod.co.uk.

Steve Vaughan (01:11:27.311)
Well rehearsed brilliantly like we planned it. Yeah. In the meantime, happy shooting out there and we'll talk to you soon.

Nick Church (01:11:29.538)
You