I had been thinking of capturing the green flash in the arch of the Torre della Meloria (in the sea off Livorno) for a few years, but only recently did I tackle this demanding shot. The difficulties were mainly two: calculating where to set up to catch the sun’s last ray in the Tower’s arch, and photographing a green flash. For the first issue I solved it with the PhotoPills app, which worked with extreme accuracy. As for photographing the green flash, I relied on experience and on being able to predict it several tens of minutes in advance, as I described in my book Lights and Colors of the Sky. Once the shooting spot was set (Antignano seafront, Livorno), I went there on July 19, but a cloud covered the view in the last 5 minutes before sunset. The next day I tried again, positioning myself about 50 meters further North (as indicated by PhotoPills), and I hit the target. To my surprise I found that behind the Tower there was an LNG regasification plant, so the Sun set behind it; this meant the disk was hidden early, but the two side tips of the remaining portion of the solar disk stayed visible, and both were green. The right one was positioned exactly behind the Torre della Meloria.
The tower is an 18th-century structure that stands isolated in the stretch of sea that in 1284 was the scene of the famous battle in which the fleet of the Republic of Genoa overwhelmed that of the Republic of Pisa, which never recovered from that defeat. Administratively it is part of the municipality of Livorno.
The tower, destroyed by the Genoese in 1286,[2] was rebuilt in 1598 at the will of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici, but was later knocked down by the force of the sea.
The present-day structure dates to 1709 and was raised under Cosimo III: it consists of four pillars joined by pointed arches on which rests the body of the tower proper, to offer less resistance to the waves.
Details: Canon Eos1DxMk2, EF 400 IS f/2.8, stopped down to f/ 5, 200 ISO, solar disks shot at 1/2500, Green flash at 1/1000. 20 July 2021
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