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A Roller Coaster… A Kind Of
It’s not a ride. But it feels like one. Shot with an ultra-wide lens, this pedestrian bridge bends and twists like it’s unsure whether it’s architecture or attraction. The metal curves upward, forward, out of the frame—pulling your eye (and your balance) with it. Perspective doesn’t just stretch here—it spirals. Geometry gets theatrical. At the top of the climb, a small group walks calmly, as if unaware they’re part of the illusion. No one is rushing. One wears yellow, another carries a bag—ordinary people on a not-so-ordinary structure. The Adriatic glints below, a boat docked quietly at the base. It could be a coastal scene from anywhere in Italy, but…
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Hanging Heart at via Olmetto
Taken in Milan, this photograph is built around a single point of chromatic and emotional focus — a small, glossy red heart suspended from the centre of an ornate iron grille. The restrained colour palette of the stone façade and dark metalwork works to its advantage, ensuring the heart becomes a magnetic anchor for the viewer’s gaze. The pattern of the wrought iron, a chain of interlocking circles bisected by vertical bars, lends the image symmetry and rhythm, subtly broken by the heart’s irregular organic shape. The composition is tightly framed, allowing no distraction from the relationship between object and setting. The verticals of the grille are aligned with precision,…
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A
Some photographs are built on complexity — overlapping narratives, layered subjects, visual chaos distilled into coherence. This one is built on the opposite: a single, dominant letter and the deliberate restraint of elements. The capital “A” scrawled across the double wooden doors becomes both subject and statement. Whether an anarchist mark, an initial, or just a passing act of vandalism, it punctuates the otherwise rigid, formal architecture. The geometry of the building — rectangular panels, horizontal mouldings, the granite base — forms a rigid grid, and into this grid the bicycle is quietly inserted, its own triangles and curves breaking the dominance of the rectangles without challenging their order. Technically,…
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Late for Lunch
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Walking Table in via Cornaggia
Via Cornaggia in Milan is not a place one usually associates with humour in photography, yet this image carries an almost surreal tone. A man strides down the cobblestone street, carrying a table on his shoulders, its legs pointing skyward like some awkward sculpture. His face is completely obscured, leaving only body language and context to speak for him. The everyday act of transporting furniture becomes, in this frame, an absurd visual gesture. The narrow perspective of the street enhances the composition. The converging lines of the walls and cobbled path guide the eye directly to the man, amplifying his centrality within the scene. The geometry of the table mirrors…
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Hurry up and shut down the $%&? call!
I shot this photograph on a winter evening when the city was still busy but already slowing down. The street lights had taken over from the sun, and the air was full of that post-work restlessness — half leisure, half impatience. In front of me, a couple had paused mid-walk. She waited, a shopping bag at her side, wrapped in a red coat that caught every ounce of the lamplight. He, a few steps ahead, was absorbed in his phone — fingers scrolling, face lowered. It was a scene of quiet tension, familiar to anyone who has ever waited for someone whose attention is elsewhere. The composition relies on opposition. She…
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An Inside Irongate
Inside and old building, in the heart of Rome.
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The Arson
The wind had carried the scent long before I arrived—burnt resin, iron oxide, the telltale acridity of ash cooling under morning sun. What was once structure and story was now a cinder pile, framed awkwardly by two still-standing beams like broken arms. I didn’t need to ask what happened. I just raised the camera. This photograph leans into disorder. The eye stumbles across charred planks, twisted metal, and a scorched panel half-folded in retreat. It’s not elegant, and I didn’t want it to be. The strength of the frame lies in its refusal to sanitise. Destruction is inherently chaotic; presenting it neatly would be a betrayal of what it is.…
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Hanging Clothes Waiting to Dry
I made this photograph on a terrace overlooking the valley, where the most ordinary of domestic acts — laundry drying in the sun — becomes unexpectedly theatrical. The line of garments stretches across the frame, their irregular shapes and colours set against the vast blue expanse of the background. The rural landscape below, softened by distance and haze, contrasts with the immediacy of cotton, wool, and synthetic fabric caught in the breeze. From a technical standpoint, the image is driven by colour and contrast. The saturation is high, which intensifies the reds, purples, and greens of the clothing and the terracotta of the terrace. Against the cool, almost painterly tones…
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The Abused Balcony
The irony here was too sharp to ignore. A fascist-era building , clad in travertine and brick, declares in Latin: Ave, dulce vatis flumen — Ave, vetus orbis nomen. “Hail, sweet river of the poet — Hail, ancient name of the world.” Above, the symbols of empire; below, a tangle of satellite dishes, like mechanical flowers craning toward the global signal. The architecture aims for eternity, the technology changes with every billing cycle. I framed this head-on, symmetry unbroken, letting the building’s own monumentality dictate the geometry. The composition rests on that tension — history and broadcast, stone and plastic, rhetoric and reception. The Latin inscription begs for permanence. The…
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Inside a Lost Building
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Wrecked Hull
There’s something oddly compelling about the scars of a boat out of the water. Without the softening shimmer of the sea, the hull stands exposed — every scratch, blister, and patch telling a story of its time afloat. When I came across this one, propped up on its stand, the colours struck me first: the chalky off-white giving way to the battered turquoise, with angry flashes of red oxide bleeding through like old wounds reopening. I framed it tight, keeping the top and bottom of the hull cropped to remove any distraction from the shapes and textures. The horizontal divide of colour became my anchor, with the wooden prop jutting…
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The Fisherman’s Knots
In an age of automation, efficiency, and scale, this image restores dignity to the gesture of the hand. The photograph captures a fisherman absorbed in the ancient ritual of mending his net—a task as old as seafaring itself. His fingers, calloused and sure, draw thread through mesh with the concentration of a craftsman rather than a labourer. There is no sea in sight, only scaffolding, plastic tape, and the anonymous infrastructure of a modern dock. Yet this contrast only strengthens the narrative: amid industrial noise, a human persists in doing things slowly, correctly, traditionally. The net becomes more than a tool—it is sustenance, memory, continuity. Every knot ties past to…
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So long and thank you for the fish
Well, this is not exactly the Restaurant at the End of the Universe — but you get the idea. The scene is a working dock, somewhere between the last haul of the day and the quiet moment before the boat heads out again. A fisherman, clad in yellow waterproofs, stands mid-task, surrounded by crates of glistening nets and freshly caught fish. The deck of the boat, the worn concrete, the splashes of green and red from the gear — it’s a palette that speaks of utility rather than design. The composition benefits from the elevated vantage point. Shooting from above flattens the scene into a graphic arrangement of lines, textures,…
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Just a soccer field… Part 3
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Just a soccer field… Part 2
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In-Eye
Photography has a curious way of leading the mind into patterns — an instinctive search for meaning, even when none exists. We are hardwired to interpret shapes and juxtapositions, to anthropomorphise objects, to find faces in clouds and stories in shadows. This image is one such case: a seemingly simple shot of a ship seen through a weathered window, yet the geometry conspires to suggest something far more figurative. Here, the diamond-shaped porthole becomes an eyelid, its corroded frame the brow, and beyond it, the bow of the ship forms an unmistakable iris and pupil. It’s a quiet trick of composition — one I noticed only after the fact —…
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Against the Tide
There’s a stillness in this frame that caught me before I even thought about the technical side. A lone figure on a bicycle, paused at the edge of the pier, framed by the unbroken horizon and the muted textures of concrete and water. The light is soft, almost hesitant — no harsh shadows, no dazzling highlights — as if the scene itself wanted to remain understated. I worked to keep the composition balanced but not too neat. The lamp post on the right anchors the image without overpowering it, while the figure sits almost at the centre, enough to draw the eye but still letting the expanse of sea and…
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What Lasts of a Saturday Night Party
Another week-end is gone. Ordinary life gets kicking-in back. A cigarette butt, a crumpled flyer announcing a Saturday night out, and the cold geometry of rusted iron bars were all that remained. The contrast between the fleeting promise of fun and the permanence of decay was unavoidable. From a compositional standpoint, the shot relies heavily on framing. The bars of the grate, corroded and heavy with age, create a literal barrier between viewer and subject. They cut across the image in thick lines, forcing the eye downward into the scene. The detritus beneath—the soaked paper, the stub, the fragments of broken glass—becomes both imprisoned and revealed. Depth is enhanced by…
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Lost Cigarettes at Piazza Affari
The Milan Stock-Exchange is just closed, another stressful day is gone, so are the cigarettes. The Milan Stock Exchange has just closed. Another day of trading — of numbers, speculation, tension, and relief — is over. The square begins to exhale. The crowds thin, footsteps fade, and the traces of human presence remain in small, almost invisible ways. Here, in a shallow puddle on the cobblestones of Piazza Affari, the day’s residue is quietly recorded: cigarette butts, scraps, and the inverted grandeur of a neoclassical façade. I was drawn to the way the water held both the building’s form and the detritus of the day in a single frame. The reflection, sharp…
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Let’s get the party started…
Fishing boats have a way of announcing themselves well before they reach the harbour wall. The sound of the engine carries over the water, but it’s the birds that really give them away — a moving cloud of wings and calls, circling, swooping, waiting for the scraps that will inevitably be thrown overboard. This shot catches the “Nuova Zita” in that precise moment of return, driving straight toward me, bow cutting through the water, foam rising in a perfect V. I chose a dead-centre composition, a choice some might consider too rigid, but here it felt essential. The boat’s symmetry — red trim framing the white hull, the vertical mast…
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A Portrait on the Nasdaq Building
I took this photograph in the year 2000, standing in front of the Nasdaq building and staring at a giant portrait of a man whose name I never learned. The caption read “July 1985” — perhaps the date of his death — and the grainy, blown-up image suggested an older video still. In the upper-left of the portrait, there were shelves lined with what looked like vinyl records. That detail nudged me toward thinking he might have been a musician or someone who worked in the recording industry. But it’s speculation. What I could say with certainty was that his expression stopped me in my tracks. There was a strange…
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So Long, Eos-M
A couple of days ago, while wandering around a street-market, I spotted a small “exhibit” of old Nikon and Hasselblad lenses. I thought it would have been nice to get the two “classic” lenses for the System V, so I traded my Eos-M (and lenses) for a Carl Zeiss lenses: a Distagon 50 and a Sonnar 150. The seller was eager to strike the deal, but I’m not sure who actually got the best bargain…
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Slow Walk at Mulberry St.
