Today was tour day. We went to the town of Montepulciano during the day to check out old town, before we had a photography tour booked with Alfredo.

Montepulciano can be a little bit confusing because it’s the name of a medieval hilltop town in the province of Sienna in Tuscany, and it’s also the name of a wine that is not produced in Tuscany.

Come photography tour time we got into the car and it became a game of racing for light.

We started at the windows 95 wallpaper spot.

This involved pulling onto the side of a highway, scrambing going down the embankment of an overpass and wading waist deep into grass for the perfect angle.

Then we moved to the Gladiator ending scene. To get here, we wound our way up and down various semi steep roads, down the back driveway of a school before wading through more grass.

From this angle, outside of the wheel marks of mowed lawn, it would be difficult to discern what era we were in. We rested here for a good long while, crouched on the heelside, watching rippling waves of grass fields and feeling the breeze, waiting for Alfredo to take a smoke as we heard his tales as a Reportage photographer. And tales Alfredo had, from stories of how he gained the trust of DRC Congo generals to facing down guns in the inner streets of LA in his search.

The sun was starting to set, so we set out towards another set of hilltops, turning up and down more roads, questionable roads, then finally definitely not roads.

Alfredo continued to tell us tales of his time as a reportage photographer as we watched the light change and the sun set —

— before we finally raced back to catch Montepulciano at night.