In this ongoing series I'm trying to present you my most important images of 2024 in a new way. For each of my trips I have put together a slideshow that compresses roughly one week of images into a slideshow of roughly 1 hour, usually less. I know this still means quite a lot of commitment and also a lot of trust, so grab a chair, make yourself comfortable and start watching.

I hope I've found the right balance between the chronological truth and logic and the amount of artistic expression and laissez faire. Now here's the second of these videos. Welcome to Tuscany.

Tuscany is one of regions that you can't get tired of. It's where all things that make you curious as a photographer come together. Incredibly picturesque landscapes, very old, dense and beautifully vibrant cities that seem to breathe and live more than anywhere else. There's plenty of culture, old and new, there's art, there's food and there are of course the people that still seem to have a sense of what life on planet earth, life among others, really means.

The trip I've made was hectic and full of impressions. Actually there were even more impressions than I could handle within that week. So sometimes while contemplating during our bus rides I felt that my senses as well as my photography got slightly blurry and less analytic, less telling and descriptive, for the lack of a better description. I don't know yet if this is a good thing or something to keep being aware of during trips in the future.

The trip started in Lucca. And yes, it's one of these cities you'll never forget. Actually there's not that one thing that I could name in order to express what Lucca is about. It's just the people, the narrow streets, the squares and old buildings, the bars and cafes, the combination of small and simple, important and picturesque. A truly wonderful place to start this trip.

Pisa is not too far away, so of course we saw the famous Leaning Tower as well. The city is impressive and the famous buildings around the Piazza dei Miracoli are incredibly articulated and well, famous. But if you can live with the fact that you haven't seen the Leaning Tower for real you actually can live on without having seen Pisa. And the amount of tourists make this decision much easier than you think it is. Another option is to get up really early and just for a couple of minutes breathe the still quiet atmosphere between those built landmarks.

Then there's Siena, probably the most famous city of Tuscany, maybe only beaten by Florence, a city I didn't visit this time. Siena is built on top of several hills, so the pedestrian streets are like a net grappling up and down and over the various mounds. It's a magnificent place for surprising discoveries as the city's structure is very unique. Of course there's Il Campo, the plaza of all plazas and Siena Cathedral in all its glory. There has already been said and written so much about these locations that it only makes sense to suggest to go there for yourself and see these wonders of our built environment.

I've made several day trips to various villages and churches in the immediate vicinity as well, places like Pistoia, Barga, San Gimignano or Montalcino, but I guess it's best to discover them all while watching the slideshow. I'll provide detailed chapter marks in the YouTube description of the video as well, so you can skip around to watch only those parts of the clip that you're most interested in. Here's the link, I hope you'll enjoy: