Thoughts
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Italy, Landscape Photography and the Law
Welcome back to the “Law, Order and Photography in Italy” series. The second episode (the first being about Street-Photography) deals with Landscape Photography and, again, provides practical advise for the photographer who travels through Italy shooting its nature. Summary Landscape Photography, at first sight, looks like a piece of cake. No need to hip shoot, no fear of being confronted by an illiterate policeman or angry passerby, no model-release to carry… just you, your camera and your subject: the Nature. But things, as often in Italy, aren’t that simple since rules and regulations extend (literally) up to the top of the mountains. To put it short, there are a few…
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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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The Hasselblad Way
As the readers of this blog know, I seldom talk about gear because since the very first post on this blog I made a point of stay focused on (shooting) pictures instead of musing about pointless technicalities such as Camera A vs Camera B ISO performance, Lens X vs Lens Y sharpness, APS-C vs Full Frame and so on, but today I do an exception because of an old Hasselbld 500 C/M that I have been given to try (and that probably will buy.) There is only one way to shoot with a Hasselblad: following its rule. The film has to be loaded in a certain way, the magazine locked…
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Multiple Meaning
We do see, in a picture, what we want to see. While the vast majority would focus on the dynamics between the shooter with the hoodie and the man with spectacles, those familiar with the inner circle of photography in Pescara will immediately spot, behind the man, Mrs. Franca Cauti, the Big Boss at Ohmasa Foto Video…
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A HDR Experiment
This is my first – and possibly, last – attempt of using HDR to post-process my pictures. Unless I’m able to get a more creative outcome, there is no reason to have pictures that look deadly similar to those of the other users of Nik Software Collection (as I am:))
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VueScan and the missed Bits-per-pixel
Ed Hamrick’s VueScan is a great software that supports almost every scanner available, including out-of-production film scanner. Sometimes its interface behave in non documented way as in the case of the Bits-per-pixel option in the Input tab that disappears once the Infrared Clean option is enabled in the Filter tab. I wasn’t able to figure out the relationship between the two settings until Ed Hamrick himself kindly answered (lightfast, I would say) to my question. Kudos to him for that, but it would be nice to have this Infrared clean-Bits per pixel issue mentioned in the user guide :)
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Meaningless
Sometimes it is easier to tell “what this is not” instead of “what this is”, as in the case of this photography. Meaningless, wrongly shot and overexposed. A good reference point to consider when thinking of my own photos as something that worth to be seen.
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Italy, Street-Photography and the Law
Update – 2 On July 2014 the Polizia Municipale of Rome seized a street-photographer ‘s camera, but the Court bashed the seizure. Update – 1 Here is an A4 leaflet useful to stand your ground if your street-photography work is questioned by somebody else. Introduction* As there are few texts in English dealing with (street) photography and Italian laws, I’ve decided to put my lawyer‘s hat and sketch some toughts on the two main topics involving the Street-Photography: shooting candid and publishing them online. To cut a long story short, Italian law follows a similar approach to other Western jurisdictions and – in particular – of Articles 8 and 10…
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The Nightmare
I never realized how important is to shoot unnoticed – and respect people – during public performances until I went to a tango exhibition, last night. This guy has been a pain in the neck: he shoot by paying almost no attention to the public, his remotely-operated flashing at his ease – no matter if the people was getting strobes in its eyes.
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When The Passion Is Gone (thank to a sneaky photographer)
The close-up delivers a feeling of hot passion, as often tangueros do. But a wider view, including that sneaky photographer, kills the mood.
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EOS-M. Manual focus tips and results for Street-Photography and more
In the quest for an acceptable use of my Canon EOS-M I think I’ve finally found a way to exploit my M-mount lenses after the poor experience with the LCD focus. The last two exposures posted, this and this, have been shot with a Carl Zeiss T* Biogon 35/2,8 through zone-focusing, while the picture of this post has been manually focused using the EOS-M’s 5x magnification feature. In both cases the results are more than acceptable, giving a new life to this severely limited camera. All I can say is that is true what seasoned photographers use to say about the cameras: as soon as you get acquainted with your…
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Carl Zeiss T* 50 1,5 Sonnar and EOS EF-M 18-55
Gear time again. Notwithstanding its quirks I can’t get rid of this EOS-M camera and still try to find a reason not to dispose of it. This time I wanted to see how does the camera performs with Zeiss ZM lenses (namely, the Carl Zeiss T* 50 1,5 Sonnar) thanks to the – again brilliant – EOS-M to Leica M lens adapter by Master Adriano Lolli. As everybody can see the results are of a poor quality compared to the (not stellar) performance of the Canon EF-M 18-55. The Zeiss is not faulty (I use it on a Leica M6 and it works like a charm) so I came to…
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A manual-focus atteimpt on a moving target
Still needs practicing
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EOS-M. An act of fairness
While I have been highly critical with the Canon EOS-M street-photography performance, I have to admit that this little camera (coupled with the 18-55 stabilized kit lens) performs pretty well in landscape and, since the cost has fallen down to a very affordable level, is it possible to “risk” the camera in harsh places without worrying so much.
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Never Trust the Autofocus (not only) in Street-Photography
The more I practice the street-photography, the more I find myself more at ease with zone-focusing instead of trusting the camera auto-focus. This is, in my case, particularly true with hip-shooting where I can only “guess” what the camera is actually focusing. Though not a candid, this photo explains what I mean: the idea was to have the flowers and the small lamp in focus, but the actualization has been the exact opposite. My fault, of course, because I would have given a look at the viewfinder, but the point is that I didn’t feel like I had to since the AF will cares. Another skill I need, Kime apart,…
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The EOS-M just sucks
I made a point of staying clear of gearhead-oriented posts like: “x100s is better than M9” to focus on images and shooting only. In fact this blog only hosts two or three entries that talk about gear while the rest is dedicated to the exposure I catch. I want to break the rule again to provide an absolute subjective while definitive opinion of the Canon EOS-M: in one word (well, two, actually) it sucks. Thank to the ingenuity of Adriano Lolli, a pure genius, I have been able to couple my EOS-M with a Zeiss Sonnar 50 1/5, in the (lost) hope that by doing so I would have obtained…
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Nobody Is Immortal
Kodak Films…
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Kime in photography
While I was setting the aperture and the focus zone to shoot from the hip the subjects shifted the position of their heads and I missed the shot. Lesson learned: I decided to take this picture too late. I was aware of the composition a good ten seconds before, but I idled in uncertainty. When I finally resolved myself to shoot, I did everything on a hurry a I missed the shot. I definitely need to develop Kime in photography.
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The Photo I Didn’t Shoot
Every amateur photographer (and maybe a few professionals) has a shot he chose not to fire. In my case it is a brutal knock-out on a Mixed Martial Arts match. As official photographer of the event I was allowed to wander around the venue with no restriction (but jumping on the ring). During the second round I sensed that something was going to happen: the fighters started trading heavy punches at close distance and the temperature of the match raised suddenly hot. The crowd went mad, inciting the two men to hit harder and harder. All of a sudden, a hook at the jaw shut down the light of one…
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Too Noisy
A Marching Brass Band rehearsing its performance… maybe too noisy even for daylight time?
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Photography and the dangers of ethics
Starting from my usual visit at Yanick Delacroix website, yanidel.net, and Eric Kim blog link after link, I’ve stumbled upon a post by Joerg Colberg discussing the always-hot topic of ethics vs law in (street-)photography. The usual way to handle this problem is by expressing it in terms of “freedom-of-expression-vs-personal-privacy” and by raising questions like “would you have shot this picture?”, “how do you feel photographing homelesses, bums and freaks?”, “Is this photo ethical?” and invariably concluding without giving a clear (though non necessary correct) answer. So, for what it worth, here are my two pence. To put it short, the Colberg (proposed) Doctrine says (verbatim quotation) it might be…
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Foto-Grafo admitted to the Persol Reflex Edition contest
This photo has been accepted for the Persol Reflex Edition contest. I usually don’t like to participate in this kind of initiatives, but the appeal of the possibility to win a Leica M-E was too compelling!
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Thirthy years behind…
I took these two shots unbeknownst of the work of Luigi Ghirri and Mimmo Jodice. These photo cannot be at all compared with those from the two masters, nevertheless what amazed me is the similarity of the compositions between what I did and those of Ghirri and Jodice. It seems that I’m into a path already explored since some thirty years or so. Now the challenge is how long will it takes to evolve into a contemporary (and, possibly, original) style.
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When the day is gone
… there are plenty of ways to still make a newspaper useful.
