-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Slow Walk at Mulberry St.
-
Next Time, Maybe…
I made this image in one of those narrow alleys in central Brussels, where restaurants compete not just with food but with neon, colour, and attention. It’s visual overload by design. Menus on easels, signs screaming prices, waiters halfway between invitation and insistence. But what caught me wasn’t the display—it was the woman walking straight through, uninterested, unmoved. She wasn’t choosing where to eat. She was choosing not to. The photo hinges on that gesture. Her hands are in motion, her shoulders hunched from the cold, her gaze slightly lowered. She becomes the counterpoint to the street’s whole premise. All this effort around her, and none of it lands. That’s…
-
The Lost Battle
Against the New York traffic, the controllers themselves, contended in vain.
-
Fisherman’s Friend
When the course is set back to the dock, especially at night, there is no better companion than the reassuring glow of the harbour’s twin beacons. These masts, painted in unmistakable red and green, have long served as silent guides, their geometry as familiar to mariners as the constellations above. This photograph, titled Fisherman’s Friend, plays not only on a brand name but on the enduring role of such structures in the choreography of safe returns. From a compositional standpoint, the image centres on the red mast, giving it commanding presence against a pastel-hued evening sky. The placement is deliberate—slightly forward and to the left of the green twin in…
-
Life And Work On A Fishing Boat
I took this just before dusk in a working harbour, where boats aren’t romanticised—they’re tools, piled with other tools, patched, rusted, functional. Riviera isn’t posing. It’s docked, burdened with skiffs, plastic crates, folded nets, and the quiet fatigue of a long shift at sea. The composition pushes tight against the frame, stacking hulls on hulls, blocking any clear horizon. The visual noise—cables, ropes, red crane arm—disrupts the scene enough to pull you into its clutter. The sky, soft and forgiving in the background, does little to alleviate the heaviness of the vessel. That contrast matters. Technically, the image holds despite the mixed lighting. The fading day cast a bluish tint…
-
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…
-
Shopping in Bruxelles
Early afternoon in Bruxelles, The best moment to go shopping.
-
The Seagull’s Rest
-
After the Party
‘Round Midnight. The party’s gone. It’s time to clean the mess. Tomorrow, the square comes back to its dull life.
-
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.
-
The 365th Shot: Between Sacred and Profane
“Between the Sacred and Profane” is the 365th picture that I’ve posted on this blog and it is the end of a one-year project where I made a point of publishing one picture per day. When, exactly 356 days ago, I decided to start I couldn’t imagine what would have been happened. I became deeply involved into exploring different genres and styles, covering big live events for a music magazine, cinema and arts awards ceremonies, street-photography, portraits, photojournalism and sport events. I went in for a couple of contests and started giving (for free, as I promised) seminars about the rights of the (street)photographers. Of course I don’t do photography…
-
When the Rubbish Basket is full…
I made this photograph with the lens barely above the surface. The irony hit me only later: a crumpled, rusting bin—designed to contain waste—floating free, stripped of purpose, drifting like a rejected artefact in a river that had no interest in borders or rules. This wasn’t a chase-the-light moment. It was more of a document-what’s-happening moment. But even in documentary photography, composition matters. The crumpled bin sits dead-centre, emerging from the water like a reluctant symbol. The surrounding wash of grey-brown is indistinct by design—an oppressive field of repetition, without texture or detail, forcing the viewer back to that sodden, disfigured centre. Technically, I shot this with a long lens…
-
The Day After The Tide
After the tide, the river comes back to normality, while the boatmen account for the damages. I waited for the light to fall low enough to cut across the hulls and expose what the flood left behind. This isn’t a storm photo—it’s what follows. Boats grounded sideways, lines tangled, some afloat, some tilted into the banks. Nothing dramatic. Just consequence. Shot from the opposite bank with a 300mm telephoto, compressed enough to layer the damage. The image stacks: river in the foreground, boats mid-frame, wreckage and crane behind. The eye bounces between verticals—poles, masts, supports—and diagonals—listing decks and snapped canopies. It’s cluttered by design. Recovery never looks clean. Exposure leaned toward…
-
Holding Against the Tide
Time was running short and felt compressed. The tide was coming in faster than expected, and the sailor’s movements had lost any trace of routine. Urgency reshaped posture, gesture, and balance. The man is bent forward, his body pulled into the rigging as if negotiating directly with the boat rather than controlling it. His grip is firm but not elegant. There is no choreography here—only necessity. The frame excludes his face entirely. The choice was not deliberate, however it didn’t matter, since identity is secondary; what mattered was the physical negotiation between human weight, rope tension, and a changing shoreline.
-
When the Tide Recedes
This scene struck me as more than just a visual curiosity—it posed a question. What doesn’t belong here: the boat or the car? The early evening light had just enough character to lift detail off the flat grey of the pavement and tease texture from the bark of the bare trees. The DA 50-135* handled the compression beautifully, allowing me to frame the boat prominently while holding the background activity—a fire truck, scattered people, and that lone parked car—in a shallow but still informative focus plane. I appreciated the restrained dynamic range of the K-5’s APS-C sensor here. The muted palette lends the image an autumnal melancholy, without needing the…
-
St. Peter in Background
St. Peter and Castel S. Angelo as seen from the fourth floor of the Corte di cassazione (Italian Supreme Court.)
-
The Straycat
Alterness becomes second nature, for those who live on the streets.
-
The Empty Stage
There’s a stillness in this image that’s almost unnerving — the kind of stillness you find after the audience has gone home, the performers have left, and the sea has reclaimed the soundscape. The photograph presents what looks like a small, weather-worn platform facing the horizon, its rusted surface marked by time and salt. In front of it, the patterned paving stones draw the eye directly forward, as though you’re being ushered to take your place before the infinite backdrop of sky and water. Compositionally, the image is disciplined and symmetrical without feeling sterile. The vanishing lines of the pavement and the horizon are set dead-centre, pulling you into the…
-
Clandestine Seagull
I took this photograph in the harbour, late in the afternoon when the light had already started to fade into that bluish, uncertain zone. The boat was clearly not preparing to set sail, yet there was this lone seagull perched as if ready for departure, almost waiting for a conductor to come and check its ticket. That hint of anthropomorphic humour is what made me stop and press the shutter. Compositionally, the bird sits roughly on the intersection of thirds, naturally drawing the eye amid the clutter of fishing gear, ropes, and rust. The machinery around it frames the subject without enclosing it, lending a sense of depth and context.…
-
Wrecked Ship
There’s a heaviness to this photograph, not just in the physical mass of the vessel but in the sense of time etched into its surface. The frame is filled almost entirely by the side of the wreck, the wood weathered to grey and streaked with rust-red, algae-green, and salt-white. The colours are muted but carry a richness born of decay — pigments laid down not by brush but by years of exposure, water, and neglect. From a compositional standpoint, the choice to exclude the horizon and most of the surrounding context forces the viewer to confront the ship as an object, almost abstract in its texture. The eye moves along…
-
A Sailor’s Knot
I was drawn to this image for the way it captures the physicality of work at sea without showing the sea itself. The coiled rope, weathered and darkened, sits heavy against the chipped paint and rust stains of the boat’s surface. The knot is both functional and sculptural — a product of necessity rather than ornament — yet it commands its place in the frame with the authority of an intentional design. From a compositional standpoint, the photograph relies on a strong division between planes. The horizontal band of the boat’s edge anchors the top third, while the ropes cut diagonally through the frame, breaking the stillness. This interplay of…
