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Sailing Home
The quality of the Viltrox 56 1/4 XF never ceases to amaze me.This image was taken with an X-T4 at ISO1600, so the quality of the sensor plays a significant role in the overall result. However, as the lens is not supported in Affinity Photo 2, the image is wysiwyg in the sense that no profile-based corrections have been applied.
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From Waltham to Boston
‘From Waltham to Boston’, an offshoot of a bigger project on documenting Boston’s pulse, is now available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book.
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Hidden in Plain Sight. A Japanese Journey
Although I have a lot of pictures from my various trips to Japan, organising them into a book is a challenge. The photos themselves are good enough to deserve publication. However, most of them are affected by a ‘déjà-vu’ effect. People on the subway, crowded crossroads, striking contrasts between modernity and the past, or between rural areas and highly urbanised ones, pop culture vs. business culture… no matter how hard I try, every single photo gives the feeling that someone has already done it. I am neither an anthropologist nor an expert on Japanese society, so I have no reasonable explanation for this feeling. Perhaps it is simply a matter…
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UnortORTOdox (Ferrania)
This is an unorthodox use of an orthochromatic film (namely, Ferrania Orto.) It is not supposed to be the first choice for reportage or travel photography, but rules are made to be broken, aren’t they? As per the photo, it was taken in North End, Boston’s Little Italy.
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A Maserati GranTurismo
Another piece of Italy in Boston…
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A Ferrari 812 GTS in Boston
Amid the urban thrum of a bustling boulevard in Boston, a Ferrari 812 GTS rests with theatrical poise, like a tenor waiting for the curtain to rise. Its rosso corsa bodywork catches the sun like a blade, slicing through the cluttered backdrop of imitation, of diluted Italian flair printed onto shirts, menus, slogans. But here—here is the real thing. This image captures more than automotive power. It embodies the burden and brilliance of authenticity in a world obsessed with mimicry. The Ferrari’s uncompromising lines, forged in Maranello, don’t shout. They assert. In contrast to the busy street and distracted passers-by, the car is still, composed, sovereign. It doesn’t need motion…
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A Cornhole Board – Independence Day Edition
I took this photograph in Boston on July 4th, and for me, it captures a small but telling fragment of the day’s celebrations. No fireworks, no parade—just a simple cornhole board dressed in the American flag, surrounded by scattered red and blue beanbags on a sunlit brick pavement. It’s an image that speaks to the quieter, more tactile traditions that sit alongside the grand spectacle. Compositionally, I let the board occupy the upper right of the frame, its diagonal placement adding a sense of movement and inviting the viewer’s eye from the legs toward the target hole. The wooden box in the foreground balances the frame and anchors the bottom…
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Tesla Coils@Boston Science Museum
Capturing a Tesla coil mid-discharge is less about speed and more about timing. The arcs of electricity, chaotic and brief, demand an intuitive trigger finger and a dose of luck. I didn’t want the image to become a science illustration; I wanted it to hold some tension between spectacle and control, between the purity of mathematics and the danger of raw power. The coils themselves form a natural anchor in the bottom third of the frame, giving structure to what would otherwise be an abstract burst of energy. I shot through a safety mesh, letting it subtly ghost across the image, a reminder of the physical danger involved in what…
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Powermeters
This photo was taken with an Ilford XP2 Super 400, a Voigtländer Bessa R2 and a Voigtländer 35mm f/1.4 II lens. The film was digitised using a Pentax K-1 and a Pentax FA 100/2.8 Marco mounted on a custom-built rig. The resulting raw was processed in Affinity Photo. In Develop Persona, first the image was turned in black and white, then the master curve was intverted and finally exposure, contrast and other parameters were tweaked.
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Editing a photo taken with a Carl Zeiss Jena 135/4 Sonnar and a Fuji X-T3
A vintage Carl Zeiss Jena 135/4 Sonnar whose RF mount has been replaced with a Fuji X mount by Adriano Lolli (https://www.adrianololli.com).Coupled with a Fuji X-T3, it delivers pleasant results. Post production is highly subjective, so the final outcome might no be ‘acceptable’ to some taste. Still, the lens is very good.
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Floating
This image was born out of a fascination with stillness in the midst of implied movement. The mannequin — suspended, curled, caught in an almost foetal position — seems to drift within a capsule that looks as though it could be orbiting somewhere far beyond Earth. The large, circular light behind it could be a porthole, a hatch, or simply a stage light; its blinding white obscures what might be beyond, giving the scene a surreal, detached quality. Technically, the biggest challenge was exposure. The extreme contrast between the brilliant backlight and the darker figure risked losing detail on both ends. I chose to protect the highlights, letting the shadows…
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Another attempt at DLSR film scanning
Still trying.I digitised the negative with a Pentax K-1 and the FA 100 2.8 Macro lens using the JJC clone of Nikon ES-2. Postproduction is done in Pixelmator Pro. I used a Nikon 35TI and a Kodak BW400CN to take the original photo. Strangely enough, the JJC does not allow a 1:1 ratio with the Micro Nikkor 60 2.8.The instructions advise to mount the 62mm to 52mm step-down ring, the #2 52mm barrel-shaped tube and finally the film holder. These instructions are clearly wrong, as it is not possible to get 1:1 magnification with this setup.So I removed the tube and mounted the film carrier directly on the 62mm to…
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The Silent Geometry of a Trabocco
This image came out of a walk I almost didn’t take. The light was beginning to fall into that uncertain hour, not quite golden but leaning into it, with a softness that flatters without deceiving. I was drawn to the trabocco — that wooden skeleton of fishing history jutting into the Adriatic like a forgotten broadcast antenna. Technically, the image lives and breathes in its lines. Everything points outward — cables, poles, railings — a quiet explosion of geometry pushing against the calmness of the sea. The house, slightly off-centre, serves as a visual anchor, balancing the thrust of the lines while allowing the scene to feel alive, not over-symmetrical.…
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Fisherman’s Fatigues
I shot this one late in the day, when the light had softened just enough to graze the worn textures without flattening them. The fatigue in the title isn’t poetic—these clothes, half-limp, half-hardened with salt and use, are the remnants of someone’s labour, someone likely still out at sea. I didn’t stage anything. These were just there, draped across makeshift wooden trestles, drying under the weight of their own exhaustion. What makes this image work technically, for me, is the tension between stillness and implication. Nothing moves in the frame, yet everything speaks of motion just ceased—pulling ropes, lifting crates, hours on a rolling deck. The shallow depth of field,…
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A Vessel Moored on the Pier
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The Mystique of Film
I have resisted for a long time before giving out my two cents about the neverending debate ‘film vs digital’. I gave up after the next self-delusion I read in a well-known ‘semi-pro’ (purposely not linked) online photography magazine. It featured the umpteenth column explaining how shooting film ‘gets the experience back’, going full-manual ‘forces you thinking’, having limited exposures ‘pushes you to become more selective’, and all the usual motives connected with the choice of travelling on a horse-powered chariot instead of using a regular car. There is no need to shoot film to experience all that. Set the camera on full manual, disable OIS and IBIS, use a…
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A Gull, Posing
A gull sits perched on a bollard by the water, its body angled just enough to suggest awareness of being seen. The rust-stained base, heavy and industrial, contrasts sharply with the lightness of the bird resting on top. It is a moment where function and chance converge, turning a docking post into a stage. Composition is centred and deliberate. The bollard fills the frame vertically, anchoring the image, while the gull becomes both subject and ornament. The blurred surface of the water behind isolates the scene, stripping away distraction so the viewer confronts the simple pairing of steel and feathers. Technically, exposure is well handled. The whites of the gull’s…
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Three Lamposts
Sometimes the simplest subjects offer the richest visual rhythms. This photograph of three lampposts along a shaded path is a study in repetition, perspective, and the gentle irregularities that occur when human-made structures meet the slow reclamation of nature. The posts lean — not dramatically, but enough to betray years of shifting soil and seasonal wear — and that subtle tilt gives the image a quiet tension. The composition is carefully observed. The frame leads the eye from foreground to background in a gentle S-curve: the path winds left, the lampposts march back into the trees, and the play of shadow and sunlight dapples both ground and foliage. The staggered…
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Three Sprouts
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Game Over
Photographs like Game Over remind me that sometimes the most direct visual statements are also the most loaded. Here, a simple, hastily spray-painted message on a makeshift surface is transformed into something more imposing by lens choice and framing. Shot on a Nikon F3 with a Nikkor 16mm fisheye, the image carries the unmistakable spatial distortion of that ultra-wide glass. The curvature of the edges pushes the wall and banner into a bowed shape, making the words bulge towards the viewer. It’s a subtle but effective way of amplifying the sense of confrontation—as though the message is leaning into us, impossible to ignore. Technically, the black-and-white treatment strips away distraction…
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Technogym Milan@Night
I photographed this storefront in Milan after dark, intrigued by the way its illuminated windows cut through the night. The architecture itself is not the subject so much as the grid of glowing rectangles, each acting like a screen against the blackness of the street. The strong yellow framing lines draw the eye, repeating rhythmically across the facade, while the deep shadows surrounding them emphasise their intensity. Compositionally, I chose a wide perspective to capture the full stretch of the facade. This decision places emphasis on repetition and geometry rather than on any single detail. The asymmetry of the right side, where a bright advertisement interrupts the rhythm, creates a…
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Late Night@Piazza San Babila
Working with a compact camera like the Panasonic TZ-100 at night is a reminder that you don’t always need a full-frame monster to tell a story — but you do need to understand and embrace the camera’s limitations. The TZ-100’s one-inch sensor is not built for clean, clinical low-light work. Push the ISO and it will show noise quickly; underexpose, and shadow recovery will fall apart. But here, those very traits help carry the mood. The composition rests on a central axis — the illuminated corridor pulling the viewer inward, flanked by the Binova and Ivano Redaelli showrooms. Their glowing interiors act like bookends, framing the pathway and setting a…
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So Long, and Thank You for the Fish
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Stairway to Hell
This photograph emerged from a fascination with how architecture shifts once stripped of its context. What the lens captured here is, in essence, a flight of stairs. Yet under the harsh saturation of artificial red light and the obliteration of all surrounding detail into deep black, it becomes a surreal passage, one that feels less like a functional structure and more like an allegorical descent—or ascent, depending on how one reads it. The title, of course, plays on that ambiguity. From a compositional standpoint, the image relies heavily on abstraction. The staircase cuts diagonally across the frame, its curve creating a dynamic tension with the void beside it. Negative space…
