I have a 07.00 flight from Gatwick. This involves leaving home at 03.30 so not a lot of sleep to be had. As I am only away for 6 nights I had assumed the parking would be cheaper than a chauffeur. This was incorrect. Parking charges had gone through the roof and I decided to park in the short stay as it was only about £20 more than the meet and greet and much more convenient. It does seem now that chauffeurs are cheaper. I won’t dive myself to the airport in future.
A few years ago I vowed I would never fly with Easyjet again as they were so horrendous. This time I have no choice but am pleasantly surprised. I have booked an extra legroom seat so I can take an extra bag onboard. My camera equipment pretty well used up my hold allowance. For the princely sum of £43 I had a great seat with loads of room, boarding pass issued when I booked, swift progress through the airport. I could not fault it in anyway. The crew were great too.
Tim setup a WhatsApp group for us all. This meant the entire group could stay in touch whilst out on assignments. He suggested we meet in a cafe just outside the airport. Everyone is friendly and we compare notes on trips and cameras while we wait for everyone to arrive.There are 7 in the group: Caroline, Sharon, Mike, Lou, Rita, Mel and I.
Tim apologises that there is a problem with the booking of our minibus. Consequently he has to hire car and take some of us and the rest go by taxi.
We are staying at Masseria Degli alive (meaning Large Farmhouse with olive trees). That is exactly what is was. A beautiful old farmhouse, converted in to a guest house, with a pool and gnarled olive trees in the grounds.We were taken to our rooms then ordered drinks. We had our first briefing session with Tim on the large terrace overlooking the manicured grounds.
I was nervous. It sounded as though everyone else had done way more photography than me and several of them had been on photographic holidays before. I needn’t have worried. Everyone was friendly and my camera skills were better than I thought. Tim’s purpose of the briefing was to check that we were all happy using our cameras in full manual mode and to emphasise the most important thing – exposure. This led me to have a complete Eureka moment. I asked Tim how I could lock the exposure as well as the focus. His response:-
‘ Are you using AUTO ISO?’
‘ Yes’ I said.
He said ‘Don’t. Point the camera at your subject and set the ISO you want. Exposure then fixed and you just play around with aperture and shutter speed to get the effect you want.’
Now I appreciate that if you are not into photography this will be totally mystifying but I assure you that this was so blindingly obvious when he said it that I felt like a complete idiot. In fact, it is what I used to do until photographing chimps in dark jungle. Because they were fast moving, I just didn’t have time to think about ISO and set the camera to AUTO for convenience. Trouble is I never changed that setting in the next 4 years because it seemed so easy. Also, as I generally shoot wildlife this seemed a sensible choice. I now only use AUTO ISO if its very challenging light and something fast moving. Undoubtedly my new camera helps with that too.
We then all played around in the grounds taking photos and Tim giving us guidance on how we could improve the shots we’d taken. A really constructive and useful session for me. The shots below were me playing around and concentrating on perfect exposure. White flowers are always tricky to get all the detail and not blow the rest of the picture.
We go to our rooms and freshen up for dinner which is in the restaurant at the Masseria. The food is excellent, the wine flows and we have a great first night together. I already know this will be another fun trip.
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