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Ceci n’est pas un cadre
A few, different meanings. The most evident (?):it is a mirror, actually. Thus is not a peinture. The less evident: the title is a sleight of word on the famous Magritte’s masterwork “Ceci n’est pas une pipe“. The lesser evident: I shot the picture in Bruxelles, where is located the Magritte Museum.
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Late Afternoon Workers
At Place de la Monnaie, in Bruxelles, late-afternoon workers look their life go by, while the rest of the world, enjoy the fun. This photo felt less like a building and more like a roll of exposed film. Fifteen windows, side by side. Fifteen little theatres. The framing is perfect—not by accident, but by architecture. A row of lives unfolding under fluorescent light. You can almost hear the hum. Some rooms are empty. Some are dim. In a few, people remain—cleaning up, wrapping gifts, turning off screens. There are Christmas trees, forgotten chairs, coats slung over partitions. And above all, stillness. Each window holds its own shot. Unrelated, disconnected. A…
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The Seagull’s Rest
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An urgent phone call?
Using a tele (200 mm) allowed me to take the picture but the long focal didn’t separate the planes as a 50 mm would. Truth is that – in these condition – I would hardly have been close enough to obtain the visual effect I was looking for, but the alternative was not to take the shot at all.
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Remainders in Prati
No need to spend huge money,to have a good read. There’s a certain romance in a place where books are stacked so high they seem to form their own architecture. This remainder bookstore in Rome’s Quartiere Prati is one such space — an organised chaos where towers of paperbacks and hardcovers lean against each other like old friends, and the scent of yellowed pages lingers in the air. When I framed this photograph, I wanted to invite the viewer inside, to feel that they might squeeze through those narrow aisles and get lost in the labyrinth. The open doorway, flanked by bookstands spilling onto the pavement, works as a visual…
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VueScan and the missed Bits-per-pixel
Ed Hamrick’s VueScan is a great software that supports almost every scanner available, including out-of-production film scanner. Sometimes its interface behave in non documented way as in the case of the Bits-per-pixel option in the Input tab that disappears once the Infrared Clean option is enabled in the Filter tab. I wasn’t able to figure out the relationship between the two settings until Ed Hamrick himself kindly answered (lightfast, I would say) to my question. Kudos to him for that, but it would be nice to have this Infrared clean-Bits per pixel issue mentioned in the user guide :)
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Portrait of an Heavy Metal Singer
Devilish, isn’t it?
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A Comfortable Chair
The circular seat, the elliptical opening, the chrome stem, and the disc base all offered clean geometry to work with. Seen from slightly above and centred, the chair becomes less an object of utility and more a composition of curves and reflections. This was shot on film, and that decision affects the final result. The tones fall into a gentle mid-range; the blacks aren’t aggressively deep, and the highlights aren’t forced. There is some visible grain and a bit of dust from the scan, which I chose not to remove. These imperfections remind me that photographs are physical objects before they are digital images. The chair’s glossy surface reflects its…
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Italy, Street-Photography and the Law
Update – 2 On July 2014 the Polizia Municipale of Rome seized a street-photographer ‘s camera, but the Court bashed the seizure. Update – 1 Here is an A4 leaflet useful to stand your ground if your street-photography work is questioned by somebody else. Introduction* As there are few texts in English dealing with (street) photography and Italian laws, I’ve decided to put my lawyer‘s hat and sketch some toughts on the two main topics involving the Street-Photography: shooting candid and publishing them online. To cut a long story short, Italian law follows a similar approach to other Western jurisdictions and – in particular – of Articles 8 and 10…
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Portrait of a young scholar
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Portrait of a Wrestler
There’s a particular weight to portraits of athletes, especially those whose craft is as primal and disciplined as wrestling. When I took this photograph, I wanted to strip away the spectacle of the sport—no mats, no crowds, no action—and focus instead on the man behind the contest. The framing is deliberately close, the upper torso and head taking dominance in the composition. The subject’s direct gaze into the lens is neither aggressive nor performative; it’s a quiet, steady presence. The choice of black and white enhances this honesty, removing any distraction of colour and forcing the viewer to engage with form, texture, and light. In the background, out of focus,…
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Portrait of a politician – 1
There’s a certain pleasure in photographing with the Leica M9—a camera that rewards precision and patience rather than machine-gun bursts. This portrait was made in a crowded hall, the politician seated among an audience whose attention was turned toward the stage. The light was far from forgiving, a mix of weak ambient and uneven spot sources, but the M9’s sensor responded with a tonal richness that digital cameras often lose in harsh conditions. I chose to work wide open, which gave me the shallow depth of field needed to isolate his face from the visual chaos around him. The crowd dissolves into a swirl of shapes and tonal smudges, leaving…
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Secret Beyond the Door
Who knows what they’re talking about?
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The Way Out
There is something about an open window that always draws me in—not for what lies beyond, but for the threshold it represents. This frame was taken from inside a dimly lit room, the glass swung outward, offering a partial view of a Parisian-style zinc roof, punctuated by a small chimney vent. The decision to work in black and white came naturally; the textures and tonal contrasts were far more compelling than any colour the scene might have offered. The geometry of the roof panels and the window frame gave me strong lines to play with, and the skewed perspective from shooting slightly off-centre added a subtle tension to the composition.…
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The Double Helix
When I made this photograph, I was struck by the tension between form and function in the spiral staircase. The image does not seek drama or grandeur; instead, it isolates a fragment of everyday architecture and presents it as a study of rhythm and geometry. The curved underside of the staircase sweeps across the left of the frame, guiding the eye upward, while the metal railing introduces a vertical counterpoint. The steps themselves, worn and slightly uneven, add texture against the otherwise smooth surfaces. From a technical standpoint, I opted for a straightforward exposure, allowing the contrast between the whites of the wall and the greys of the steps to…
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Portrait of aTocaor
There is no audience in the frame, no dancer to mark the beat, no palmas to answer the rhythm—just the tocaor, alone with his guitar. The photograph is intimate, stripped of spectacle, and in that simplicity lies its strength. Shot in black and white, the image pares down the moment to texture and expression. The grain and contrast evoke the deep tradition of flamenco portraiture, where the absence of colour invites the viewer to listen with their eyes. The focus is on the face—eyes closed, lips resting in concentration—as the player leans toward the neck of the guitar. This is not a performance for the world but an inward conversation,…
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Portrait of a Lawyer
Not every portrait needs a full frame. Sometimes, it’s what’s just out of focus that tells the most. Shot close—uncomfortably close—this image doesn’t try to flatter. It doesn’t seek symmetry or polish. The man’s on the phone, mid-thought, caught between reaction and restraint. His eyes are sharp, but not fixed. His hand rises instinctively to his face, as if shielding or steadying something unspoken. The photograph is grainy, the depth shallow. One lens, one second, one expression pulled between two worlds: the one he’s hearing and the one he’s trying to shape with his response. You don’t hear the voice on the other end, but you can sense it—by the…
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Barbarians at the Gates
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EOS-M. Tips and Results For Street-Photography
In the quest for an acceptable use of my Canon EOS-M I think I’ve finally found a way to exploit my M-mount lenses after the poor experience with the LCD focus. The last two exposures posted, this and this, have been shot with a Carl Zeiss T* Biogon 35/2,8 through zone-focusing, while the picture of this post has been manually focused using the EOS-M’s 5x magnification feature. In both cases the results are more than acceptable, giving a new life to this severely limited camera. All I can say is that is true what seasoned photographers use to say about the cameras: as soon as you get acquainted with your…
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Early Morning Shaving on The Beach
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The Referees
Shot in a break between rounds. Two officials—one in the ring, one just outside—pass the scorecard without a word. The exchange is procedural, yet visually precise. One hand extends up, the other down. The gesture anchors the frame. I placed myself at shoulder height, slightly off centre, to keep the ropes intersecting cleanly across the image. The ring’s horizontal lines break the vertical repetition of the gym’s back wall and audience. Geometry does the work—no crop needed. Lighting was mixed. Industrial overheads with a cold cast, ambient spill from the crowd, spot highlights off the shirts. Monochrome strips it back. No distractions. Just action and structure. ISO 1600 to hold…
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Cornermen
There’s a rhythm to these images — a quiet, almost ritualistic interlude in a sport otherwise defined by its violence. The corners of a boxing ring are not just places of rest; they are theatres of strategy, whispered advice, and sometimes silent reproach. In each frame, the fighter is turned inward — literally and figuratively — toward those who bear no gloves but shoulder equal weight in the outcome. From a photographic standpoint, these are intimate studies taken from the same vantage point, the ropes acting as both boundary and compositional anchor. The repetition of the ring’s geometry — horizontal ropes, vertical corner post — frames each scene with a…
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Behind The Shaft
Taken from inside one of those old Roman elevators—small, slow, caged in iron. The kind you find tucked into the corner of a 19th-century palazzo, where the wood creaks and everything smells faintly of dust and time. This photo looks outward, through the gate. But in a way, it also looks inward. The gridded metal frame keeps your focus close. The world beyond is blurred just enough to feel distant. Stairs curve down somewhere out of view. The light is natural, soft, diffused. The rest is silence. There’s no action here. No drama. Just the texture of the old ironwork, hand-forged patterns now worn smooth by a hundred years of…
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Rest under a tree
Resting under a tree, on a sunny afternoon, in springtime.
