View of the Piazza dei Miracoli

If you've read the same articles I have, the story goes that a high end camera doesn't make much difference in photography.  The key to good photography is experience, practice, and creative imaging.  A great photographer can take a photo with an iPhone that will blow the socks off a picture from an amateur with the most expensive DSLR.

Exterior views

We don't aspire to be professional photographers or even semi-professionals but, when I look back at our old photography, I can see the leaps and bounds by which our photography has improved.  Sure, we have a higher end DSLR now than when we first took shots of Pisa but that's not the real difference.

Interior of Pisa Duomo

The real difference is that, when we came to Pisa five years ago and took pictures of the Leaning Tower, our framing was boring; we didn't take advantage of the huge contrast in color between the brilliant white marble against green grass and blue skies, the differences in size between tiny people and massive buildings, and the strange shapes in the Piazza dei Miracoli.  We didn't know how to utilize natural light to take interior shots and we didn't know anything about post processing either.

Piazza dei Miracoli at dusk

We get a lot of questions from folks asking us about our photography --- how do we take certain snapshots, what sort of equipment do we use, and so on --- which both humbles and surprises us.  (And, perhaps, if folks are interested, I'll do a full run down on our photography equipment at some point.)  Lately, we've even been getting requests from people to sell our images which is even nicer.  We're working to meet people interested in photography, taking classes and photography walks , and experimenting with new techniques.

But, as we work to continue improving our photography, what we find is that the best teacher is practice.