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Easy To Shoot?
This picture might look “ordinary” but for the fact that I shot it with a rangefinder film camera (guess which?) during the scene change between to acts of a theatre play. Scene assistants were placing the furnitures, actors were trying to focus on their parts, there was no time (and place) to design a proper composition and set the camera. No autofocus, no real-time exposure and white-balance setting. Maybe I have been lucky capturing the match flame close to the cigar, maybe it was because of “muscle memory”, but I did it nonetheless. Problem is that I could not be sure if I succeeded until, one week later, I saw…
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Dai Shodo@Kyoto
Kyoto ‘s Teramachi-dori is full of suprises. Amidst shops of the most different kind and attire, booklovers can find this small gem. This is Dai-Shodo, a quiet print shop tucked into a narrow Kyoto street. I stepped inside on a grey afternoon with no particular plan. The light was soft, filtered through old windows and the hushed presence of paper. Everything in the shop seemed to lean inwards—frames, shelves, stairs—as if holding its breath in reverence. What struck me most wasn’t the prints themselves, but how they were displayed. Ukiyo-e woodblocks and vintage ephemera layered on every surface, propped rather than hung, as if caught mid-conversation. The stairway invited you up…
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Nagoya’s reportage featured in The Good Life
The Good Life‘s October issue features my photoreportage of Nagoya.
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Fuji X-T2 records audio at 16bit/48Khz
Neither the user manual, nor the Youtube ‘experts’ tell this open secret: the X-T2 samples audio at 16bit. Although the sample rate is 48khz (a standard in video production) 16bit may not be enough to record (a minimum) professional grade audio. This is not a big deal for the rest of the humans, but If you want to ‘go pro’ or need to unleash your Gear Addiction Syndrome be advised that to have 24bit/48Khz audio you must switch to the X-T3.
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Meaning in Photography
In this picture, taken during the reportage I did for the Teatro Marrucino’s I Miserabili, an old and exhausted fighter rests while a young citoyen waves the French flag defying the fire of the royalists. The strength of the picture is in the dialectics created by the two protagonists, hinting at a “relay” between an old man that “gave all”, resting while a young man steps in.
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Denegata Justitia
Sometimes a picture acquires a meaning that goes beyond the original intent of the photographer. In this case, taken from a reportage I did for Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables featured at Teatro Marrrucino, in Chieti, the photography becomes the archetype of the denegata Justitia. The defendant asks to speak, the justice stares elsewhere.
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Breaking the Fourth Wall
Shooting a play is challenging because you must be ready to seize ‘the moment’ and, at the very same time, think of unusual compositions to avoid the boring ‘frontal’ perspective. Shooting part of the reportage from the backstage of Hamlet, with Giorgio Pasotti and Mariangela D’Abbraccio directed by Francesco Tavassi I had the possibility to experiment the breaking of the fourth wall. This picture is one of the results.
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Counter-intuitive Focus
This photo I took during a reportage for a theatre hosting a concert of Uto Ughi shows a counter-intuitive use of focusing. Rather than go for the obvious option, the attention is shifted on the two musicians in the background capturing their concentration, with the leading violin blurred and conceptually, thus, ‘left behind’. The global effect is reinforced by a neat separation between the dark and light parts of the frame.
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When Colour Helps Composition
This photo I took during a reportage of Miseria e nobiltà – a classic of the Neapolitan comedy by Eduardo Scarpetta – in the mise en scene of Lello Arena e Luciano Melchionna gives a lot of insights on how composition works. The triangle designed by the two actors on the sides and the taller actress in the centre is reinforced by the colours of the costumes: black in the centre, white in the sides. Finally, the purple background behind the black figure enhances the eye-driving effect toward the centre.
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On “timing the moment”
This photo I took during an assignment for a reportage on the theatre drama called “Le Signorine” with Giuliana De Sio and Isa Danieli is an excellent example of the “Timing the moment” concept. “Timing the moment” is a skill any event-based photographer should develop (or hone, if he’s gifted enough to have been born with the gift.) Especially in sport – but too in concerts and theatre’s show if you did not attend the rehearsal – you don’t know in advance what is going to happen. A unique mixture of intuition, reflex and decision (what the Japanese would call 決め – kime) allows capturing an unforeseen – and excellent…
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Hope after the Storm
The sea hadn’t quite calmed when I made this frame—the wind still cut the crests sharp, and the noise of the waves clashing against the pilings of the trabocco was thick, physical. I waited for a break in the light, not hoping for much, and then the rainbow broke into view—just briefly—and gave the scene a tension it was missing. Not the kitsch kind of rainbow, but the kind that appears in defiance of ruin. The trabocco—an ancient fishing machine precariously perched on stilts—has always struck me as the embodiment of resilience. I framed it slightly to the left to leave space for the arc, letting the rainbow anchor the…
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Deadly Bored
Once again, the meaning of this picture is counter intuitive and “made up” by the composition. The scene is seen from the perspective of the mannequin: at the end of a hard day spent sitting on the street-front, it (or he?) looks deadly bored and tries to kill the time before the shop closes by casually looking at the next passerby. The directional effect (from the mannequin to the passerby) is achieved by the diagonal connecting the tip of the hat, the feet of the mannequin and the cast of the shadow. Taken as a whole, these elements drive the eye from the mannequin to the persons and not vice-versa.
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A Virtual Glance Dance
The essence of this photo is all in the glances of the protagonists. The man looks at the woman, the woman looks at the luxury car. The essence of this photo is all in the glances of the protagonists. The man looks at the woman, and the woman looks at the luxury car. It is this subtle game of glances that tells a story and turns the photography from a casual picture into something worth seeing. Once again, it is not relevant whether the people portrayed are actually involved in the “glance dance”, as what matters is the image to convey the meaning created by the overall result. This confirms…
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The Power of Underexposing
This portrait was built in the shadows. Underexposing by design meant letting darkness dominate the frame, allowing only the essentials — the face, the glint of an earring, the folds of the dress — to emerge. The result is a scene stripped of distraction, where every visible element has earned its place. The composition is weighted to the left, pulling the viewer into the subject’s gaze and leaving negative space to amplify the drama. The rich crimson of the gown benefits from the controlled exposure: under normal lighting, its details might have flattened into uniform red; here, the fabric’s texture and the embroidery’s sparkle gain depth from the way light…
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When Tilted Photos Work
Tilted photos are very challenging to take. It is easy to break the composition, lose an essential part of the scene, or take a bad picture. Furthermore, making sense out of a diagonal orientation with a ratio that is not square (Hasselblad people, I can hear you loud and clear!) adds layers of difficulties. As counterintuitive as it might look, this photo taken in a “normal” orientation would have lost all its visual impact.
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Good Plan, Poor Execution
The idea behind the composition is entirely correct. The mannequins and the girl form a triangle, as does the direction of the stares, conveying both a sense of symmetry and counterposing the liveness of a human being to the puppets’ lack of. A poor execution, though, led to the mannequins’ head cut, turning a visually appealing photography into a meaningless shot.
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Light as Meaning Shifter
The original idea behind this picture was to match the emptiness of the shop with the facelessness of the mannequin posing as a store clerk, to convey a general feeling of depersonalization. Unfortunately, the big lightblot represented by the poster close to the mannequin catches the observer’s attention and reduce the effectiveness of the composition. Instead of connecting the mannequin with the internal part of the store thus making sense of the whole picture, the eye just “sees” an ad poster.
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Photopanning in Rome
Photo panning is an art in itself and – when adequately practised – is able to deliver a stunning visual experience. In this picture (that has not been altered but for contrast and clarity) the overall experience reminds the Impressionism aesthetics.
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A Weird Fujifilm Battery Issue for X-series cameras
A defective battery can cause a Fujifilm X-series camera to start rattling and displaying blue, white or purple-striped screen in the LCD viewfinder. After three months of troubleshooting, having the camera traveling back and fro between my studio and Fujifilm Italy tech support, they have been able to identify the issue: a defective battery didn’t send enough power to the camera, thus jeopardizing its operation. Here is a Youtube video I made that shows the issue
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Keep Out!
This photo conveys a message of “rejection”: first, a security guard who blocks access to the jewellery and then a signal of a prohibition of access reinforces the concept, thanks to a composition that guides the eye to a diagonal that goes from the bottom to the top, from left to right. Obviously, there is nothing “true” about all this because the overall result is the result of the organization of the spaces and the management of the perspective that allow connecting semantically elements that, in reality, have no relationship between them. It would have been enough to shoot from a different angle – or not juxtapose the security guard…
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Hands of a Steward
Shooting up and close in confined space. A skill every street-photographer should hone. This photograph, Hands of a Steward, strips air travel of its grand narratives—no sweeping cabin views, no glamour of jet engines—reducing it instead to the essential human act of service. The subject is cropped tightly, showing only the steward’s forearms and hands as they prepare to serve water. The details tell the story: the gold buttons on the navy blazer, the insignia on the chest, the precise, slightly formal watch peeking from under the cuff. CompositionThe frame works in the language of precision. By excluding the steward’s face and body, the photograph directs our full attention to…
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Evolution in Red
The frame unfolds on a Milanese street, a busy scene of people moving in different directions, yet bound by an unplanned visual thread — the colour red. On the far left, a stroller stands out, its fabric vivid against the muted tones of the pavement and stone façades. On the far right, a man in a red jacket, phone pressed to his ear, anchors the other end of the composition. Between them lies the space in which meaning is manufactured by the viewer: a perceived transition from childhood to adulthood, implied but never intended by reality itself. The technical construction supports this interplay. The image uses depth rather than focus…
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Beer or Spritz?
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Fast Drivers in Via del Tritone
Via del Tritone at night has a way of compressing time. Standing at the curb, I could feel the pulse of the city—headlights cutting through the darkness, scooters weaving between lanes, the chatter of pedestrians briefly audible before being swallowed by the traffic. I set out to capture that restless energy, the kind that makes you feel Rome isn’t an ancient city at all, but something entirely modern, alive and impatient. The shot hinges on motion blur. A slower shutter allowed the black car in the foreground to smear into streaks of light and shadow, while the scooters retained just enough form to remain identifiable. This contrast between sharp architectural…
