-
The Boat That Never Left
Docked, stripped, tagged, rusted. I shot close with a fisheye to exaggerate the curvature of the hull and drag the viewer across its surface. The distortion isn’t incidental—it’s structural. The lines bend to reveal scale and tension. This is graffiti over steel, corrosion under paint, void behind broken glass. I exposed for the midtones to hold the whites in the spray and the texture in the oxidised seams. f/8 for consistent edge-to-edge sharpness, ISO 200, 1/125s. Light was flat—overcast sky softening shadows without dulling the forms. The left-to-right arc carries the frame. No central subject. Instead, accumulation. Tags, vents, cables, fractures. The dolphin up top is barely visible but critical—vestigial optimism…
-
The Score Keeper
There’s a subtle choreography here — one man aiming downrange, the other poised with a device held high, recording or perhaps timing. The scene is unmistakably a shooting range, but the moment is more about the roles that orbit the act itself. This isn’t just about the shooter; it’s about the infrastructure of precision, measurement, and discipline that frames the sport. Compositionally, the photograph works well with its layered focus. The viewer’s eye moves naturally from the strong diagonal of the man in white, up his raised arm, and then across to the figure in dark clothing aiming towards the target screen. The two red handprints on the barrier form…
-
When Heroes Come to Town
The armour clanked softly as he turned. Foam, paint, Velcro, and pride. I took this shot at a cosplay convention. The kind where universes blur together in the corridors and everyone is someone else for a while. He was dressed as Optimus Prime—or something close enough to carry the weight. She stood opposite, painted purple, gold-clad glove raised in mock judgment. Thanos, reimagined with a wink. I shot from behind. It felt right. Not to reveal, but to witness. There’s a kind of reverence in seeing a costume from this angle: the care in the stitching, the scuffs from wear, the illusion holding just enough to be believable—but only to…
-
(Not so) Intelligent Design
A white hand dryer, sleek and sterile, is mounted firmly on a tiled wall. Below it dangles a single electric cable, ending uselessly in an unplugged RJ connector. There is no socket in sight. No conduit, no power. Just absence. The image is clean, quiet—and absurd. The title, Intelligent Design, delivers a sharp, dry irony. It borrows from the vocabulary of creationist theology to highlight a mundane failure of basic planning. What was meant to be functional is, quite literally, disconnected. In this unassuming scene, the promise of utility is contradicted by execution. The dryer, meant to dry hands, is impotent. The infrastructure, meant to enable function, is missing. Photographically, the…
-
The Solitude of Power
In this staged tableau, a single white king stands isolated at the centre of a chessboard, surrounded by a dense perimeter of pawns, bishops, rooks, and knights—black and white alike. The visual symmetry is precise, the tension deliberate. It is a composition that speaks of power, but also of its limits. The king is both the most important and the weakest piece on the board. Its capture ends the game, yet it is immobile without protection. The title, The King’s Solitude, plays on this paradox: the sovereign stands alone, sovereign yet vulnerable, elevated yet exposed. In the context of international relations, this image evokes the precarious nature of leadership on the…
-
Menu Meditation
There’s a particular silence in cafés just before ordering. That moment when the cold air from outside still clings to your coat, and all attention narrows to laminated options and the quiet negotiations of hunger. This was taken on a grey afternoon in Brussels. A couple sits across from each other, each reading their own menu as if studying for an exam. No phones. No talking. Just decisions to be made: sweet or savoury, warm or cold, this or that. It’s a familiar ritual, yet rarely observed this closely. What drew me in wasn’t the scene’s drama—there was none—but its quietness. The soft concentration on their faces, the gentle lean…
-
Renovating Milan
Milan, November 2017. A construction site—not the kind that demands attention, but the quiet kind that hides behind fabric and scaffolding. I took this photo walking past it for the third or fourth time. What stopped me wasn’t the building itself, but its ghost. Behind the mesh screen, the silhouette of the old façade still lingered, like a memory bleeding through fabric. Chimneys, outlines, the suggestion of windows. The city behind the curtain. At the bottom, the standard construction notice: printed bureaucracy stapled to metal, a reminder that change is always sanctioned, scheduled, structured. But the rest of the image resists clarity. Straight lines waver, verticals drift. Even the fence…
-
Intelligence Contest
A pane of glass separates two worlds. On one side, the hyper-stylised gaze of a model — digital, sculpted, aloof. His stare pierces outward from an ad inside a hair salon, promising precision, control, curated masculinity at €21. Behind the glossy veneer, real people go about their routines, dwarfed by the giant printed face that symbolises a synthetic ideal. On the other side, a cluster of balloons—soft, round, unformed—calls out with its own clumsy presence. Unintended perhaps, but visually evocative, the column of latex orbs resembles a puppet or caricature. In their simplicity, they reflect something the model cannot: humanity, imperfection, absurdity. The composition turns into theatre. A confrontation of…
-
The Temple of Justice
From an elevated perspective, the grand staircase of the Italian Court of Cassation descends in perfect symmetry. Framed by neoclassical columns and lit by reverent lamplight, this space does not merely lead—it ascends, conceptually, toward the divine. The title, The Temple of Justice, is not metaphorical hyperbole, but a statement of function and form. This is not a courthouse. It is a sanctuary. Justice, as the image suggests, is not a secular procedure. It is a liturgy. It unfolds with rituals, vestments, invocation of higher powers, and the solemnity of faith. The robes, the benches, the altars of the law—these mimic the language of churches. And the Court of Cassation, the…
-
Skull of Glass at the London Science Museum
Standing in front of this glass skull, I was struck by the tension between its physical transparency and the opacity of its meaning. Photographically, the object invites a very particular challenge — how to capture something that both reflects and refracts its surroundings while retaining a sense of sculptural form. I approached the composition head-on, embracing the symmetry of the human face while allowing the slight distortions of the glass to play across its features. The choice of a tight crop eliminates environmental distractions, forcing the viewer into a direct confrontation with the piece. The reflections — faintly revealing the space beyond — create subtle secondary layers, adding context without…
-
Gigi Cifarelli Guitar Solo (feat. Michele Di Toro) – Live@Florian Espace Pescara
This the reportage I did on behalf of Rockol.it with a Canon 5d Mk III and the venerable Canon EF 70-200/2,8. These frames came from a night where the light was scarce but the music was abundant. I knew from the start that I would have to work with the available stage lighting, which meant pushing the ISO well beyond my comfort zone. The result is a grain structure that feels almost filmic — not something I tried to hide, but rather embraced, as it adds texture that suits the intimacy of live jazz. The composition developed naturally: Gigi Cifarelli to the right, fully immersed in his guitar, and the…
-
Lost in Le Puglie
There are roads in Puglia that don’t go anywhere fast. This was one of them. Shot from behind the wheel, somewhere between nowhere and nowhere else, I caught this image of a slow-moving tractor framed by empty fields and a sky too wide to hold. The road is narrow, uneven, old—but it doesn’t complain. Like most things around here, it does its job without fuss. The light was gentle, just after afternoon, slipping into that moment where colour fades softly rather than drops off. The greens were still sharp, the sky leaning pale toward evening, and everything felt settled. No drama. No rush. What drew me in wasn’t the tractor…
-
Ray-Ban in Milan
It’s not just about what sits on the roof—it’s about what it says without blinking. Shot in the heart of Milan, this image captures a building that has seen eras come and go, crowned by a brand that has spent decades convincing the world to look cool while blocking out the light. The lettering floats above the stone like graffiti gentrified by permanence. I framed the photo dead-on, as if to let the architecture and the logo negotiate their own contrast. The façade is neoclassical, orderly, almost too proud to wear an ad. But there it is—Ray-Ban—scribbled in neon above cornices and keystones, as defiant as it is inevitable. Black…
-
Inside The Clocktower
I made this photograph standing in the cramped, dusty heart of the clocktower, where the public face of time is reversed, fragmented, and framed by machinery. From here, the bold Roman numerals of the clock are a shadow-play against frosted glass, mirrored in a way that strips them of their usual authority. The word TREBINO—the maker’s mark—appears backwards, as if time itself had been flipped. The challenge in this shot was balance—both in composition and exposure. The brightly lit clock face risked blowing out entirely against the dim, oil-stained gears and pulleys in the foreground. I underexposed slightly to retain detail in the shadows, allowing the face to glow without…
-
In Hoc Signo
-
A Skull
I made this photograph in near darkness, peering through a narrow stone opening where a skull lay against the rough wall. The framing itself creates a sense of confinement: the viewer sees only what the aperture allows, a forced perspective that heightens the impact of the subject. The starkness of the skull, caught in dim light, is amplified by the deep shadows surrounding it. Technically, the image embraces its limitations. Low light produces grain and softness, yet these imperfections serve the atmosphere. The highlights on the skull’s surface are blown in places, but this uneven exposure adds to the sense of unease, as if the bone reflects light reluctantly. The…
-
An Old Motorcade At Night
Photographing this scene with the Leica M9, I was conscious of wanting to hold the atmosphere of a summer night where history and spectacle meet. The procession of vintage cars is framed by a corridor of spectators, their attention divided between living the moment and documenting it through their phones. The motorcade moves away from me, which allows the viewer to share my vantage point — both a participant and an observer, close enough to feel the heat of the engines, yet outside the flow of the event. Compositionally, the perspective lines of the barriers guide the eye straight to the lead car, and further still down the illuminated street…
-
The Driver
Shot on a Leica M9 during a vintage car rally, this image invites a quiet question: what exactly are we looking at here — the driver or the car? The frame is tightly composed, the perspective intimate. We sit directly behind the driver, almost in the passenger seat, with the blue cockpit wrapping around us like a suit of armour. The leather cap, the quilted racing jacket, the badge that reads FIAT — all signs of a time when racing still smelled of oil and cotton rather than carbon fibre and digital telemetry. But the face is hidden. There’s no expression, no glance, no story told in eyes or brow. The driver…
-
Lightspeed
I shot this with a Leica M9 late one night, leaning out from the kerb on a curve that begged for something fast and unreasonable to come tearing through it. And eventually, this red Italian masterpiece did exactly that—roaring past with the kind of throaty snarl that makes small children cry and grown men buy things they shouldn’t. What you’re seeing isn’t an accident. It’s the moment velocity became geometry. The long exposure distorts everything into kinetic abstraction: the trees become green flame, the streetlamps twist into electric comets, the background collapses into a wash of speed-induced delirium. But the car—mid-century, low-slung, all attitude—remains just visible enough to read as…
-
After the Race
It’s not the roar of engines or the scent of oil that stays with you—it’s this. Two men, backs turned, still in their Fiat overalls. The crowd has begun to blur into the night, and the adrenaline has softened into conversation. Maybe they’re swapping lap times, maybe just trading silence. I took this shot at the end of a vintage car competition. Not during the parade, not at the peak of noise and chrome, but after. When everything meaningful often happens. Their suits are creased from hours of wear, and the red stitching on the white cotton glows under the street lamps like the last ember of something freshly burned.…
-
Alfa (1750) … Dog
There’s something wonderfully fitting about photographing an Alfa Romeo 1750 with a Leica M9. Both are unapologetically old-school, machines that demand your attention and reward patience rather than speed. Neither will do the work for you — they expect you to know what you’re doing, and they don’t forgive sloppiness. I didn’t want the whole car. That would have been too easy, too obvious. Instead, I went in close, focusing on the sweep of that impossibly red wing, the chrome stalk of the lamp, and the way the bodywork catches the light like a perfectly tailored suit. With the M9’s CCD sensor, the reds come alive — rich without bleeding,…
-
Oh…MG!
Photography has an enduring love affair with contrivance. We dress it up in words like composition, timing, narrative—but at the core, it’s a carefully manufactured illusion, an assembly of elements that never truly existed together until the shutter stitched them into one frame. This image is a perfect case in point. Foreground: the polished rear of a vintage MG, British racing green, bristling with dials, a leather-strapped spare wheel, and a backpack so perfectly positioned it feels like a prop from central casting. The badge on the leather flap and the Union Jack sticker complete the period-drama perfection. Background: a passing moment, a pair of sunlit legs and a cropped…
-
Side by Side, Ready to Ride
This frame was built on balance. Two helmets, nearly identical, sit side by side on the backrest of a motorcycle seat. They mirror one another—not just in design but in posture. The leather-padded visors tilt forward with a sort of casual symmetry, as if waiting to be picked up, used, returned. There’s no motion, but the suggestion of movement is embedded in the gear itself. The background bleeds into a blur of industrial orange fencing and out-of-focus pedestrian elements, hinting at the urban setting without forcing it. I shot this wide open at f/1.8, letting the shallow depth of field isolate the helmets from their surroundings. What results is a…
-
Spectral Lotus
Shot handheld with a Leica M9, this image was less about the car and more about the apparition it became under sodium vapour light. The Lotus, unpainted and unadorned, swept through the urban silence like a silver ghost. I wasn’t expecting it—no barricades, no marshals—just a curve, a rumble, and that brutalist sculpture on wheels appearing from nowhere. What caught my eye first wasn’t the vehicle itself but the way it reflected the city’s tired lights. The aluminium skin bounced back hues from old shop signs and streetlamps, turning the body into a temporary canvas of moving golds and yellows. The reflections aren’t clean. Nor are they meant to be.…
