Three nights is the perfect amount of time to extensively cover all of the iconic viewpoints as well as some less known ones too.
Cinque Terre are an experience, with all their pros and cons – and experience that it’s definitely worth living and capturing with you camera.
Out of the five villages – three are the ones that stand out for their photographic beauty: Riomaggiore, Manarola and Vernazza. The best time of the day around here, by far, is sunset: having three sunset sessions at our disposal during this workshop – we will be able to dedicate a full session to each town and your instructor will have enough time to teach you all the tips and trick about seascape photography!
If you’d like to get more infos about the locations – you can also visit our Cinque Terre Location Guide, that should give you an even clearer idea of the places – and if you’d like to know more about the best times to visit Cinque Terre, check this Cinque Terre Season Guide instead!
Truth is that we never run two identical workshops – due to the weather, due to the light, due to the length of the days at any given time of the year and a bazillion other variables that come into play when dealing with outdoor photography.
Take this general itinerary for what it is – and by any means don’t think that we’ll stick to it at all times!
Time to start our workshop together! On our first day, we will pick you up at the Pisa (or Florence) airport around mid-morning, so that we can start our drive to Manarola (our final destination of the workshop, 1h15m drive from Pisa and 2h20m from Florence) straight away.
Lunch: 12:30PM
As soon as we arrive at the parking lot in Manarola – the culture shock of Cinque Terre will hit you: we won’t be able to drive all the way down to our hotel, since the town centre is closed to traffic. This means that we will park our car up there and then walk down with all our stuff! It’s going to be a short walk – no worries!
Whenever we reach the town centre, we’ll leave the luggages at the hotel and head straight for a delicious lunch where you will get to try the seafood or the pesto sauce (actually “invented” here!).
Hotel Check-in & Afternoon Break: approx. 2:30/4:30PM
After our tasty lunch together, we’ll return back to the hotel to check in and take a breath before hitting the road again.
Sunset Session: 5/8PM (depending on sunset time)
Finally you will get the chance to bring out the camera from the backpack! Time to take an incredibly short walk to the seaside and capture the beauty of Manarola itself, the place where we are staying and arguable the most beautiful out of all the villages of Cinque Terre! See the images down here for reference.
Dinner: 8:30PM
It’s been a long day: finally we will have the chance to sit down and have a warm meal with some wine to end it in the best way!
Time for an early wake up call! We will do our first sunrise of the workshop in Manarola again – this time for a different and less known perspective though! We will hike up above the village (10 minutes walk) through some steps and get the twilight and sunrise from up there.
Breakfast & Morning Break: 8/10:30AM
By the time we’ll be back at the hotel, I’m sure that you will be very much looking forward to having a nice breakfast and a bit of a break to gain some energies back.
Visit and Lunch to Monterosso al Mare: 11:00AM/2:30PM
What you need to know about Cinque Terre is: not all of them are photographically interesting.
Monterosso al Mare, as pretty as it is, photography-wise doesn’t quite hit the spot as Manarola, Riomaggiore or Vernazza – and that’s why we will visit this town mid-day: it’s still worth seeing it, just not worth it to spend a golden hour session there. We will take a stroll through the city streets, along the seaside and have a tasty lunch around there.
We will reach the town by train: the train is what we will use to move between the villages for the whole workshop – as it’s 10x faster than using a car and all the stations are downtown (almost at the sea level), so that we won’t have to walk uphill everytime.
Afternoon Break/Editing: 2:30/5:00PM
Depending on how tired we are, we might either take another break or do some post-production on the shots taken in the past couple sessions. Or maybe a mix of both!
Sunset Session: 5:30/8PM (depending on sunset time)
Time to hit Vernazza – another gorgeous town of Cinque Terre! This location is also the one that probably offers more viewpoints: your instructor, depending on the time of the year and the weather conditions will decide which one will be the best on that day.
Dinner: 8:30/9PM
After twilight is gone, we will take the train back to Manarola and get our well deserved dinner there!
Second sunrise of the workshop: at this time we will probably take an early train once again and return to Vernazza to shoot it from one of the perspectives that we missed the night before. As we mentioned earlier, there’s no shortage of compositions there!
Breakfast & Morning Break: 8/10:30AM
By the time we’ll be back at the hotel, I’m sure that you will be very much looking forward to having a nice breakfast and a bit of a break to gain some energies back.
Visit and Lunch to Corniglia: 11:00AM/2:30PM
Same thing we did on the previous day – we will visit one of the less interesting (photographically speaking) towns, this time one named Corniglia. We will reach it by train in just 3 minutes, as it’s right next to Manarola: expect a looong staircase to reach the town centre from the main station, but with some beautiful views all over the coast!
Afternoon Break/Editing: 2:30/5:00PM
Depending on how tired we are, we might either take another break or do some post-production on the shots taken in the past couple sessions. Or maybe a mix of both!
Sunset Session: 5:30/8PM (depending on sunset time)
Last sunset of the workshop: tonight we will cover the last village we haven’t seen yet: Riomaggiore. Seeing the sun setting over the sea while the light hits the colorful houses of the village is just one of the most romantic experiences you can capture in Italy!
Dinner: 8:30/9PM
After twilight is gone, we will take the train back to Manarola and get our well deserved dinner there!
We are mentioning one last sunrise in the itinerary, even in our very last day: since you’ll probably have to pack things up and get ready for your trip back home, you are 100% free to decide whether you’d like to go for it or maybe just sleep in and get ready a bit later. Our recommendation is to see how the weather looks like, depending also on what conditions we got the previous day and then decide.
Breakfast & Check-out: 8:00/9:30AM
Time to pack everything up, get some “juice” for the trip back home and start our drive back towards the airport!
Drop-off: 11:00AM/12:00PM
After a 1h30m drive back to Pisa (or 2h30m to Florence), it’s unfortunately time to say goodbye: your instructor will help you take the luggages into the building and wish you a safe flight back home!
– Scroll down, select the package that more fits your needs, fill in your details and follow the process to the check-out. You will be able to leave a refundable deposit (500€ x person most of the times) via credit/debit card, bank transfer or even Paypal.
– Scroll down to the very end of the page to find the contact form or visit the “Contact Us” page to, well.. Contact us! We will be more than happy to help you with any request you have and set up the ideal workshop you have in your mind – and ultimately give you all the details to complete the deposit and secure your spot on the tour.
Why? So that you to get your own room for yourself without having to share it with anyone else. The single supplement is something we add at cost price (if not less), and as annoying as it might be, that’s something that unfortunately we can’t avoid.
That’s also how we manage to guarantee every workshop departure, even if you are the only participant for that date.
Of course you can opt for the single supplement even if you are traveling with friends and you like to have your own personal space.
– Digital Camera (preferably a DSLR or mirrorless camera, APS-C, micro 4/3 and FF will be more than fine);
– An ultrawide lens (e.g. Nikon 14-24mm, Canon 16-35mm, Tamron 15-30mm, Tokina 16-28mm etc); we recommend a lens with a wide maximum aperture (like f/2.8) in case we might do some night photography.
– A standard zoom lens (e.g. Nikon/Canon/Sigma 24-70mm or 24-105mm);
– A telephoto zoom lens (e.g. various Nikon/Canon/Tamron/Sigma 70-200mm);
– A super telephoto zoom lens (e.g. Sigma/Tamron 150-600mm); this lens is not necessary but we recommend it anyway since it allows to capture the far away details of the landscapes;
– A sturdy tripod that permits to do some long exposure photos, specially at twilight;
– A set of ND filters; these are the only filters we feel to recommend, since they become useful when you need to stretch the exposure time a little bit during some difficult light conditions;
– A camera remote to avoid blurry shots.
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