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My Photos, My Work
Tonight, I was supposed to cover a concert by a fairly well-known American jazz guitarist for a magazine I work for. However, I eventually chose not to.
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On Insincerity
This is a rant. It was caused by the umpteenth self-promotional, vertically shot from above video made toting a smartphone, in which, after the hideous opening — ‘hey guys’ — the main, and only, character promotes a personal achievement while pretending merely to ‘share a — God forbid — thought’. I usually try to be factual in my writing, stating my case in a clear and concise manner, always focusing on the merits of an issue and never blaming a person or a category. But.
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I Don’t Get It
This is the ad for an upcoming live concert of Zucchero ‘Sugar’ Fornaciari, a well-known Italian pop musician famous for his loosely blues-inspired music. Having been on stage for decades, Fornaciari is no amateur. I would therefore expect him to pay as much attention to his personal image as he does to his music. This is why I can’t understand why he would allow such a poor-quality poster to be used to promote his tour. The Fender Telecaster guitar, or rather a guitar resembling a Fender Telecaster, is poorly rendered — perhaps even by an AI. The headstock is completely wrong — it looks like it actually belongs to a Strat —…
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A Missed Opportunity
Seen from the outside the scene was too perfect to be true. A truck stuck in a narrow street near Trevi’s Fountain, in Rome, trying to negotiate its way out, and the ad on the backdoor claiming that ‘sometimes being bottled is a pleasure’ —in Italian, ‘bottled’ is also a synonym for ‘stuck’ or ‘trapped’. This is what defines ‘the moment’: the ability to recognise a peculiar combination of shapes, light and meaning that gives rise to unique photography. Unfortunately, or better, because of my poor composition, I failed to convey the double entendre I meant to capture with this photo. In fact, it did not include the left part of the…
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Why Writing About Photography Matters (or: The Importance of Re-inventing the Wheel)
This is the second of my series of short essays on photography. The title might sounds like a pre-emptive justification for clogging the Internet with yet another personal babbling about what photography is supposed to be, how photos should be taken, and so on. Actually, indeed, if one changes the names accordingly in T.S. Eliot’s quote (Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third) it become clear that there is little left to say about photography (with the exception of technical reports on cameras and lenses’ arcane features or performance essentially part of the industry marketing spins.) So, where is the point in keeping on writing…
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Photography Does Not Exist (Until the Eye Makes It)
Foreword This post is the first of a series meant to organise in a logical and structured corpus the ideas collected in this blog throughout years of taking photos in various environments. Introduction A preliminary misunderstanding that should be addressed immediately is that a photography does not exist per se. The photograph begins only when the eye intervenes—when it selects, isolates, and organises a continuous visual field indifferent, in itself, to interpretation. This means that an image is not discovered but constructed, and this construction may even fail, as when a narrative is imposed that later proves to be incorrect. From the outset, therefore, photography must be understood as an…
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We Make Cars, Not Videogames – An independent proof-of-concept in AI-made advertising
This video is a proof-of-concept for a short advertising campaign entirely designed and realised with an AI service. A bona fide brand, Alfa Romeo, was chosen to ascertaining the performance of the AI in a real-life scenario.
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Carl Zeiss Ultron 50/1,8 and Pentax K1 – An Empirical Field Test
Across this set, the Ultron performs as expected: good microcontrast and local separation, reasonably crisp edge definition where focus is placed, and a generally “clean” drawing that still keeps tonal roundness in mid-tones.
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Carl Zeiss Jena Triotar 85/4 and Nikon Z5 – An Empirical Field Test
This empirical field test of a fairly well-preserved CZJ Triotar 85/4 lens confirms its well-known performance, although a final judgement needs to wait the lens to be serviced by master Adriano Lolli in order to clean veiled glasses. At F4, central sharpness is moderate yet usable, with a lack of microcontrast. By contrast, the corners are softer. Flare resistance is suboptimal by modern standards, while colour rendition is accurate enough, although robust tweaks are needed in post-production. This photo of the Leica store display in Via dei Due Macelli, Rome, is a flare torture test. The bright, emissive Leica sign against a dark background, plus additional reflections and obstructions, creates…
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Pentacon 50/1.8 and Nikon Z5 – An Empirical Field Test
This field-test is, as the others I have published here, absolutely subjective, empirical and lacking any scientific basis. Since I couldn’t find anything interesting to photograph I decided to take pictures more focused on showing the lens features rather than creative or interesting subjects.This is why each photo was taken wide open and at F8. Moreover, to make a comparison possible, I also shot some of the mannequins featured in the Zeiss Biogon and Minolta 35mm lenses posts. Finally, as far as post-production is concerned, I used the RGB curves to set the black and grey tones, and tweaked micro-contrast.
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Zeiss ZM Biogon 35/2 and Nikon Z5. An Empirical Field Test
This is an empirical field test of the Zeiss ZM T* 35/2 Biogon lens mounted on a Nikon Z5. As with all my technical tests, this one doesn’t deal with MTF, coma, fall-offs, etc., as I’d rather focus — pun intended — on the results.
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Minolta MC W Rokkor-HG 35/2.8 and Nikon Z5 – An Empirical Field-Test
This is another episode featuring a Nikon Z camera and a vintage lens. This time, I’m using the Minolta MC Rokkor-HG 35/2.8, which I recently took out of the cupboard where I keep my old manual lenses. The following shots have all been taken wide open, in no particular order and are intended to demonstrate how the lens performs in different conditions. The Z5 was instructed to use a flat picture profile and the photos were post-processed to the final results should not be considered as a true ‘rough’ example of the lens’ character.
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Leitz Summicron 50/2 and Nikon Z5 – An empirical field test
A casual stroll around the Trevi Fountain gave me the chance to experiment with an unusual combination: an old Summicron 50/2 and a relatively new Nikon Z5. The opportunity materialised in a photo of one of the crowd-control team members regulating the overwhelming flow of tourists and ensuring that none of them were engaging in vandalism or pranks. In short, I am very pleased with the results. I owned a Leica M9 (which I happily sold) for a few years , and I can’t actually say that I miss it. My only regret was that I could only use my lenses on APS-C mirrorless cameras, such as Fujis. I knew…
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Cognitive Dissonance
In advertising, sometimes, disregard for reality is a deliberate choice because the aim is to pique the viewer’s curiosity no matter what. At other times, though, it is the result of cognitive dissonance leading to mismatched reality’s depiction, as in the case of the prop in this photo, which I took at La Rinascente in Rome, meant to work as an ad for Swiss International Air Lines and Switzerland as a winter touristic location. At first, I didn’t understand what was wrong with it. The idea looked fairly average —ordinary, I would say: a plane’s fuselage with windows, and videos were shown as if they were the outside view that…
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What, IMO, Street-Photography Is All About – One Shot Story
I took this picture eleven years ago and, after all this time, it is still a benchmark for my —and I stress the word ‘my’— definition of street-photography. The joy sparkling in the grandfather’s expression and the spontaneous excitement of the kid ignite powerful emotions and remind us of what life should be: happyness and simplicity, instead of sorrows, grief and aggressivity.
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On Prizes and Awards (a Long and Tiring Musing)
Prizes and awards are ubiquitous also in the photography world. There is an award for everything, and I wouldn’t be suprised to discover an award for the best photo award as well. When we’re just starting out on our photographic journey, it’s natural to think about entering a competition. I am not an exception, in fact I tried a few myself and I also got one honorable mention for the photo featuring this post in a competition organised by a local chapter of the Italian Photoamateur Association (FIAF).
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Autumn, Colour, Daily photo, PhotoCritics, Photography, Spring, Street Photography, Summer, Technique, Winter
Make Sense (or: Meaning is in the Eye of the Beholder)
I am a big fan of Jim Hall. A god of the Jazz Olympus, he was an amazing guitar player and played (i.e. lived) according to a simple but effective maxim: make musical sense. He jotted it on a scrap of paper and stashed it in his guitar case, so, whenever he took the instrument out, he was reminded to follow the advice. And he did it. This is an excellent advice also in photography and I do my best to follow it, also if I don’t always get it right for a number of reasons, the main one being that meaning is in the eye of the beholder as…
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Zeiss ZK Planar T* 50mm F/1.4 – Test Shots and an Unpleasant Incident
I am a huge fan of Zeiss lenses, and I have made sure to own at least one of them for each camera system I have used over the years. To be honest, my only regret when switching to Pentax and ditching Leica, Nikon and Canon was that Zeiss lenses in K mount weren’t as widely available as they are for other platforms. Sure, eBay has plenty of them, but I didn’t want to risk the consequences of overseas shipping. Eventually, however, I managed to get a Planar T* 50 mm f/1.4, and last night I went out for the first time to try it with a Pentax K-1.
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A Few More Shots From An Urban Exploration Trip
Hip-hoppers and skateboarders are often seen together in many urban landscapes. Actually, these performing arts come from different US social and geographical milieus. However, in a world where different paths of life, cultures and traditions matter less and less, and everything is a ‘fusion’, this doesn’t look like an issue. So, while wandering around in search of some subject to test a 50mm Summicron M mounted on a Fuji X-T4, I was fortunate enough to kill two birds with one stone.
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Personal Musing On Monochrome Digital Cameras
I was thinking of exploring the world of black-and-white digital photography so I started looking into the available options. Currently, only the Leica Monochrom and the Pentax K-3 III Monochrom are still the only native monochrome digital cameras availble, targeting photographers interested in maximising the potential for ‘true’ black-and-white photography compared to converted colour images. Many experts in the field justify the existence of this particular camera by citing the same manufacturers’ marketing claims, such as better overall image quality and the superior performance of a custom-built sensor. However, I am a photographer, not an electronics engineer or software programmer, so I care more about the final results than the technicalities.…
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On Film Simulation or ‘is fiction more real than reality, and why should we care?’
Simulations have turned an inevitable fact —using the chosen brand and type of film for an entire roll— into an aesthetic tool allowing the selection of the most appropriate image rendition for each single exposure. Using simulations is like having all the different kinds of film in the same roll with all the convenience of digital technology, opening a huge number of creative possibilities. Initially published on 35mmc.com This is what the standard marketing claims for software simulations are based upon, but is that actually so? As a matter of fact, the answer is yes, but if we look at the matter from a different perspective, we should consider some…
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Some odd outcomes from a photo recovering attempt using an AI
I was curious to see how an AI would handle a bad photo, so I uploaded this black-and-white shot taken in the area around Kyoto Station with my Nikon 35TI. Initially published on 35mmc.com. The photo itself —the one published as featured image— it’s part of a long term project to show the presence of Alfa Romeo (a brand I’m a big fan of) in the Japanese streets. It isn’t anything special, but I needed a starting point (the worse, the better) so, after having uploaded this poor shot, I prompted the software like this: As a professional in photo restoration and post production restore this photograph of an Alfa…
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On Detachment. Or ‘If You Love Something, Set It Free’ (cit. Sting)
A number of philosophies and religions preach the virtue of detachment from things as a path to enlightenment. When applied to gear, this advice won’t only save your soul —if you believe there’s one— but also your money and, last but not least, your photograph experience. This means avoiding the development of ‘feelings’ towards a camera or a lens that shift from appreciating their value as a tool to some sort of ‘personal engagement’. Initially published on 35mmc.com As odd as it sounds, such an attitude towards an inanimate object is more frequent than one may imagine. A paradigmatic case is the attachment of AIBO’s owners to their robotic pets:…
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On Tips’n Tricks to ‘take you photos to the next level’
I recently asked a friend, who works on the editorial side of the music industry, to share his thoughts on one of my photographs taken during a flamenco concert. His response was a deep and thorough analysis, which I will spare the readers in full. In brief, however, he praised the lighting as particularly effective for flamenco photography, noting how the chiaroscuro effect recalls the classical paintings of Caravaggio. Regarding the composition, he observed that the bailaora’s body fills the frame dynamically, without ever feeling cramped. In his conclusion, he remarked that the image captures the very soul of flamenco. As flattering as this commentary was, I must admit that none…
