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In the Rain, A Helping Hand
The rain hit fast and hard. Streets turned to rivers in minutes. I was sheltering under a bus stop roof, camera still strapped around my shoulder, when I saw the man go down. Not dramatically—just a slow, heavy fall as he misjudged the kerb under the surge of water. Then came the officer. No hesitation. No fuss. Just a clean, instinctive move to lift him. The Leica didn’t leave my eye. I shot quickly—no time to compose in a traditional sense, but sometimes the moment doesn’t wait for your geometry. The turquoise pole on the left anchors the frame almost by accident. The crossing lines in the background help balance…
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Mid-Knee Clinch
This frame caught the clinch mid-knee, elbows locked, muscles in tension, balance tipping. I didn’t fire in burst—timing was deliberate. The image had to hold the convergence of force and geometry: shin to torso, fists to neck, backs arched into compression. Shot ringside at f/2.8 with a fast telephoto, ISO pushed to 3200 under dim sodium-halide lights softened by overhead mesh. Shutter at 1/640s, just enough to freeze impact without killing the tension in the stance. Noise control was adequate. Detail retained in skin texture and compression shorts without artificial smoothing. Lighting was patchy but consistent enough to avoid burnouts. Composition obeys containment. The cage creates the visual boundary, but…
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TKO
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A view of the Bologna’s Station
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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…
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Luggages
I framed the beagle as one more item in the window: tagged by its harness, parked on the threshold, reflected like stock behind glass. The suitcases promise mobility. The dog, still and compliant, reads as another container to be handled, stored, and retrieved. That is the tension I wanted. Composition puts the animal slightly off-centre, level with the lowest display plinth so the eye equates subject and object. The reflection completes the conceit, doubling the dog the way duplicate models line a shelf. The pavement line anchors the scene, while the stacked cases build a grid that the body neatly occupies. Exposure is restrained to keep detail through glass and…
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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…
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Emanuele Cavallucci. The New Italian Pro Boxing Welterweight Champion
Boxing is cruel to photographers. Not because it’s fast — although it is — but because it’s chaotic. In the ring, there’s no neatly choreographed movement, no second takes. You’ve got sweat flying, ropes cutting through your composition, referees wandering into frame, and the perpetual risk of being exactly half a second too late. This shot came together with the Nikon D610 paired to the Nikkor 24–120mm f/4 — a workhorse lens that, while not the fastest in maximum aperture, offers just the right flexibility for ringside work. Here, I caught the moment Cristofori’s jab lands flush on his opponent’s cheek, the head snapping back, muscles taut with the torque…
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Portrait of a Professional Pugilist. Davide De Lellis
He had the kind of face that told its own story long before a shutter ever clicked — a mix of focus, fatigue, and that guarded reserve I’ve often seen in fighters before a bout. Photographing a professional pugilist isn’t about glorifying the violence of the sport, but about catching that fleeting moment where discipline, experience, and vulnerability intersect. I chose a tight composition, keeping the frame uncluttered so the viewer’s attention rested on the expression and posture. Every crease in the skin, every glint of sweat, mattered; these details carried more weight than any background could. Depth of field was shallow enough to isolate him from distraction, but not…
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Italian National Skating Championship 2019
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Americana Skating – Italian National Championship 2019
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Wasted Shot Because iPhone 7 Poor Low-Light Handling
There’s a certain frustration in watching a scene unfold that you know deserves better than the tool in your hands can give it. This was one of those moments. The Adige was shrouded in mist, the bridge arches glowing faintly from warm streetlights, the water reflecting pinpricks of gold — a scene so atmospheric it almost photographed itself. Almost. The iPhone 7 Plus, for all its merit in good daylight, simply doesn’t hold up when the light falls away. The sensor struggles, the noise reduction turns painterly, and dynamic range collapses into a murky smear. What was meant to be a layered play of mist, water, and stone turned into…
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The First Picture of the Year
The year opens with a frame caught mid-step — a street scene suspended between the casual and the cinematic. The woman in the leopard-print coat commands the foreground, her figure sharply rendered against the soft haze of the street beyond. Her presence is decisive, yet she faces away, offering no expression, only movement. The background melts into a gentle blur, two figures walking arm in arm becoming silhouettes of intimacy. The shallow depth of field works well here: the compression between crisp foreground and ghosted distance draws the viewer through the frame, making the eye travel naturally from the coat’s texture to the vanishing point of the street. Technically, the…
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Italian Boxing Amateur Championship 2018. The Reportage
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Lockpicking Tools
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Superpila still rides…
This frame came together almost by accident. I was rummaging through a heap of obsolete electronics, mostly as a curiosity, and found myself fixated by the material fatigue of an old battery unit—branded “Superpila”—held together by deteriorating fabric tape. Time had clearly done its job: oxidation, dust, flaked paint. Yet, paradoxically, the components still looked like they could spark into life. That tension—between decay and function—is what led me to raise the camera. The shot leans heavily on texture and chaos. Compositionally, it’s tight and cramped, bordering on claustrophobic, and that’s deliberate. I wanted the viewer to feel immersed, maybe even overwhelmed, as though peering into something that’s no longer…
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The Coach
In the corner of the ring, where no cameras reach and the noise momentarily fades, something deeper than training unfolds. This image doesn’t speak of punches thrown or points scored. It captures that fleeting minute between rounds—the space where a fighter breathes, bleeds, and breaks, while a coach rebuilds with nothing more than words, water, and presence. The boxer’s face tells of the cost: a swollen lip, a grimace barely masking pain, but also something else—determination still flickering beneath the bruises. The coach leans in, not shouting, not berating. This is not strategy; it is communion. The fight, at this point, is as much against doubt as it is against…
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Davide Grotta – Live
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Stop
In the squared circle, adrenaline and instinct often outrun reason. A fighter, eyes blazing, may push past his body’s warning signs, driven by pride, by the will to win, or simply by the refusal to yield. It is in these moments that the referee’s role shifts from arbiter of the rules to guardian of life itself. This image captures that exact intersection—one man still in the heat of battle, the other standing between him and the risk of irreversible harm. The referee’s gloved hands rest firmly yet not aggressively, an unspoken command to stop. His gaze is steady, his body language unshaken, projecting both authority and concern. In boxing, bravery…
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Marianna D’ama – Live
The stage is barely the size of a rug. The audience—two dozen at most—sits within arm’s reach. There is no spotlight to hide behind, no sound engineer to balance the mix, no roaring crowd to dissolve into. Just a voice, an instrument, and the intimacy of shared air. In this photograph, the singer leans into the microphone with the same intensity one might expect in front of thousands. Her eyes are half-closed, her body wrapped around the rhythm, maracas held like extensions of her heartbeat. The grain of the black and white frame amplifies the sense of proximity—every shadow a whisper, every highlight a breath. House concerts are unforgiving in…
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School of Mathematics@Sapienza University of Rome
I composed this shot knowing it would live or die by its symmetry. The rationality of the architecture demanded nothing less. Sapienza’s School of Mathematics sits like a theorem etched in stone—precise, functional, stripped of excess. Guido Castelnuovo’s name anchors the frame, a reminder that mathematics is not only numbers, but legacy. The format is tight, frontal, and unforgiving. Every vertical and horizontal line had to be clean. A small tilt would’ve betrayed the sense of order. I waited for the man to step into the doorway—not to animate the structure, but to punctuate it. His relaxed stance, paper in hand, slightly breaks the formalism of the façade. A human…
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Skating on the Riviera
This frame came together through rhythm — both in subject and structure. The skater, carving her way through a line of multi-coloured cones, offers a moment of precision and quiet control in the middle of a sunlit promenade. I positioned myself just slightly off-centre to exploit the vanishing line of the cones, letting them anchor the frame from foreground to middle distance. It’s a straightforward visual device, but effective here. They segment the space, and their bright primaries stand in good contrast to the muted pavement. The exposure leans slightly to the high side, but that was deliberate — midday light, especially by the coast, can wash out a frame…
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A (Soon) Lost Banner
This is a photograph of a sign that has clearly outlived its prime. The red background has faded and chipped, the white letters worn thin, yet the word Calzolaio — shoemaker — still points the way. The arrow to the left seems almost stubborn, insisting on a direction in a world where such trades have all but vanished from daily city life. Technically, the image is straightforward, relying on the flatness of the sign against the textured wall. The weathered surface of the plaster contrasts with the bold geometry of the lettering, while the saturated but deteriorated paint creates a visual tension between past vitality and present decay. The exposure…
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(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…
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