Adriatic Trabucci and Seascapes
In July 2017, a family trip along the Adriatic coast of Italy — starting in the foothills of the Abruzzi mountains and working south to Otranto on the boot heel. The photographs were taken with the (then) brand new Olympus E-M1 Mk II, but on returning to the UK the images were largely set aside. The extreme contrast between light and shadow in an Italian summer made post-processing very difficult with the tools available at the time.
Returning to the files years later with improved skills and vastly better software, these turned out to be some of the best seascape photographs from any trip. The images fall into two distinct sets, both shot almost entirely at sunrise.
The first set features the Trabucci of Chieti province — spindly fishing jetties built out into the sea, very similar in character to the Carrelet of the Gironde estuary in France. Some have been converted into restaurants, some are slowly collapsing, but a surprising number are still actively fished. Shot at dawn using exposures of two to five minutes, the long shutter speeds turn the Adriatic into a glassy stillness and reduce the sky to a soft gradient of colour.
The second set features the sea stacks, inlets, and honey-gold cliffs of Puglia just north of Otranto. Unlike the British coast where sea stacks tend to be grey and forbidding, these are warm ochre in the morning light, and the sea is warm enough to swim out to them — which is exactly what happened between shots.
Photographs in this album include: Trabucci on the Adriatic coast (8 images, Chieti province, long exposures), Puglia seascapes (5 images, sea stacks and cliffs near Otranto).
View the full album at mcaughtry.photo/albums/adriatic-trabucci-and-seascapes. Touch or click any image to open a lightbox view; tap the full-screen icon for the best experience. Click the “i” icon beneath any thumbnail for full EXIF data and location information for that image.