On April 14th, 2011, TUSCANY:…

  Italy

requisite pretty Tuscan landscape photo - taken with the accidental use of an unfamiliar setting on my camera which I may not be able to replicate again

…love it and actually lived in a farmhouse there from 1993-94 – but the local authorities exert such tight control on new development and changes to existing structures having an effect on the landscape – which only becomes truly apparent when you cross into Lazio to the south where it seems anything goes in some areas – that it has made everything so precious and pretty and controlled and fetishized and popular with the wealthy foreigners and super expensive that all of the essentially modest, austere and peasant-like ways of life directly connected to the beauty you are looking at have been squeezed out too, making everything here seem ready for embalming and Lazio seem pretty lively and fun in comparison?