Moravian Tuscany in April
After watching a YouTube video by Czech photographer Marek Ondracek who takes remarkable landscape photographs using the Olympus OM-1 in high-resolution mode, I was so taken with his compositions and technique that I got in touch with him and arranged to spend three days in Czechia in April 2025 on a private workshop.
The area we visited is called Moravian Tuscany, to the east of Brno in the south-east of the country. It exhibits a unique folded landscape found only in Moravia, the original Tuscany region of Italy, and in the Palouse in north-western USA. Apart from being a very attractive wine-growing region, this area is famous for some classic landscape views, usually involving a small element of the folded landscape in dappled sunlight.
Photographs of this kind are taken at very long focal lengths, often up to 400mm, which is unusual for landscape work, but which compresses the geographic folds to produce a very pleasing image. This was my first time taking this kind of landscape photograph, and the weather was not ideal, but I got some reasonable images and learned a huge amount. The May visit with more colour from poppies and crimson clover is shown in a companion album.
Photographs in this album include: Chapel of St Barbara, The cherry tree, Folds and combine, Moravian Tuscany landscapes, and more.
For camera settings, techniques and equipment used in shoots like this, see the Technique posts on mcaughtry.photo.