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Should I Buy It? (Best Taken With an 85mm)
…but actually with a 23mm (35mm equivalent, cropped.) It’s not just a shopping street. It’s a stage. Look closer: this frame holds a silent performance — a subtle interplay of desire, decision, and doubt. Three women stand just outside the warmth of the boutique, their eyes fixed on mannequins who, ironically, seem far more confident than the living observers. The mannequin inside strikes a bold pose, clad in red and certainty. The women outside? Bundled in coats, their body language somewhere between ambivalence and negotiation. On the far left, another kind of window. A glowing child’s fantasy, plastered with Disney’s “Frozen” — a reminder of simpler times, when wanting something…
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The Watchman (Street-Photography Shortcuts)
As every thing under the sun, Street-Photography too has its own shortcuts: freaky street-portraits are one of those. It’s easy to have your pictures noticed when your subject is a 60-years old Brit-Punk, an implausible-color dressed man or whatever alike: these subjects do the work on your behalf and it is very hard to obtain such kind of picture AND conveying actual meaning. Personally I like photos that – alone or made meaningful by a title – can tell a story. This way I can try to (pretend to) make “unique” shots, that stand with dignity in front of the zillions of 500px/Instagram/Flickr’s great images that are often perfect but…
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True Leather (Saved by Photoshop’s Crop)
A 35mm focal length is definitely much too wide for my kind of street-photography, but I must admit that the advantages of using a Fujifilm X100s in terms of efficiency and portability, beat any other issue related to the wideness of the lens. And the X100s’ resolution is good enough to obtain a good composition through Photoshop’s crop feature.
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Fujifilm X-Pro 2: Does It Worth It? (Lost In Via Del Corso)
As a Fujifilm camera early adopter (during time I got the X-pro 1, X100, X100s, X-E1 and X-E2) I was waiting for the X-Pro 2 to come and when that finally happened I didn’t feel so compelled to trash my (now) old cameras to do the switch. Long gone are the days of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), so I shall not buy this new piece of electronics because it doesn’t do anything that I can’t do with my actual set up (in particular, with the X100s and the X-E2.) The only actual point of interest, to me, are the dual-slot card and the weather sealed body: but I never needed…
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@ Mediterranean Beach Games 2015 – Wrestling, Italy vs France (And a primer on sport photography – Part 5)
Part 1 – Intro, Before the event, getting your media pass Part 2 – Before the event, having your media pass working for you Part 3 – During the event, get ready for the show Part 4 – During the event, how to choose which event attend to 3 – Shooting the game As I said before, the chances of getting a good exposure greatly improve if you are (or have become) comfortable with the game. But knowing how the ball rolls worth nothing if you’re not in the right position to take the shot. a – Reclaiming your space from other photographers Event (and thus sport) photography is a…
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Money Doesn’t Smell
The main photo depicts a Syrian kid surrending to a photographer, whose camera she thought was a weapon, while the side pictures are automatically displayed by the advertising engine of the online newspaper. There is a contrast between the brutal reality where the kid lives and the luxury aura implied by the two fashion shot that shows how insensitive magazine editors can be. I understand the need to monetize every click or content, but I’m not sure that this is the right way to do it. Why don’t chose, for instance, to advertise a fund raising campaign supporting UNICEF or Doctors Without Borders? And, by the way, I don’t understand…
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YANE – Yet Another Nepal Exhibit
This the poster of Yet Another Nepal Exhibit. It is hard to see the point in going to the other end of the world to take pictures that, as a Google Image Search shows, have already been shot zillions of time. In other words: taking original photos in Nepal is very hard. This teach a simple lesson: going overseas in the belief that the place makes the photo is wrong.
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The Street Photographer Dilemma: Film or Digital
To me Street-Photography is digital. I missed this shot because I wasn’t able to properly focus my full-manual kit, as I would have do with an average digital camera. There is no point in wasting film in an highly fault-rate activity such as Street Photography.
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From Camera to Print…
This is what happens when a shot is not taken thinking of its final destination (or when a graphic editor doesn’t consider what the outcome would be once printed): a poor rendition.
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Dress Different
According to the fashion-photography standards this is a perfectly usable shot. To me, that’s simply a missed photo.
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The Leica M9 CCDgate Outrageous Case
This is not “new” news, but is getting momentum: Leica M9′ sensors (including those fitted into the more than expensive “special” models) are plagued. The repair cost is 1.800,00 Euros plus VAT and shipping, not to mention the time needed to get the camera back (weeks? months?) Leica claims to offer paid support to the older, out-of-warranty customers but just doing a few math shows that it doesn’t worth it: if you own a between-three-and-five-years old M9 you’re supposed to pay 600,00 Euros (plus VAT etc.) while more-than-five-years old M9 owner will pay 1.200 Euros (plus VAT etc.) to get an old and outdated camera new sensor, affected by the…
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Norwegian Suits
A missed opportunity for a good photo. I shot too early and failed to frame the guy with the bicycle whose look would have been a nice “counterpart” with the serious attire of the businessmen he was crossing.
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An Old Portable Camera
I didn’t stage this. The camera was already set up for a workshop in the park, a portable wooden box on a tripod, complete with focusing cloth and a ground glass screen. What drew me wasn’t the device itself—it was the reaction it triggered. The boy shielding his eyes, squinting into the past through a lens designed long before smartphones flattened photography into a gesture. The composition is dense in its centre, almost chaotic with overlapping limbs and sneakers. But the tripod anchors it. The machine, primitive and precise, holds its ground in a circle of discovery. I kept the perspective low and frontal to emphasise its presence as a…
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Italy, Street-Photography and The Law – A Real Case
Last July, members of the Polizia municipale of Rome seized the camera of a British-Brazilian street-photographer, Simon Griffee, while he was documenting the way they dealt with an immigrant. As Simon’s lawyer I’ve filed an appeal and a week ago the Court of Rome revoked the seizure. The battle is not over, yet, but hopefully Simon’s camera will be back on his hands pretty soon. As soon as possible I will release a thorough analysis of the case matched with what the law says, in theory.
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Pentax k-5 And The Aquapack 458
Like the other two previous pictures, this one too has been taken by a Pentax K-5 housed into an Aquapack 458. This underwater housing, at least for APS-C dSLR, is a cheaper alternative to the more expensive, though bigger and better engineered, Ewa Marine. It fairly easy accommodates the camera and the DA* 16-50, but using this lens that has a 77mm filter thread forces the use a focal lenght of at least than 40-45 mm, otherwise the border of the external cap fills-in the picture. A DA* 16-50 at 16mm (I repeat: with a 77mm filter thread) is the bigger lens that can be accommodated into the housing, but…
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The Street Photographer Rights In Italy. The Leaflet
Here is an easy-to-carry A4 leaflet to be used in case you are confronted by a law enforcement agent of officer that question your Street Photography activity. Legal issues apart, please remember to always be polite and to help the officer not to look goofy or ignorant (as he actually would) in front of the public. Q. Does taking people’s photography in public spaces infringes sec. 615 bis of the criminal code? A. NO. Under the Corte di cassazione ruling n. 47165/2010 outdoor there is no reasonable privacy expectation, as there is no reasonable privacy expectation in case of tacit – while non equivocal – withdrawal of this right, as…
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Who Needs A Wedding Photographer Anymore?
I took this picture at a friend’s wedding. Though there was an “official” photographer, almost all of the attendees did their own “service”. They spent the majority of their time (and of their mobiles’ batteries) by obstructing the professionals on duty to get mostly irrelevant and low quality pictures. This is the main reason I chose not do weddings and – in general – ceremonies.
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60×40 Borderless Printing with a HP Z3200ps 24
Printing a 60by40cm image on a A1 roll (61cm wide) should be a pretty straightforward task: well, not on a printer like the HP Z3200. To cut the story, here are the settings: set your image landscape, and size it 60 by 40 cm, set your CANVAS size to 61,8 by 41 cm with a white background (highlighted in red, in the picture) so that the final image size is, indeed, 61,8 by 41, In the Print Settings menu select the Paper Size option and set a custom page size of 61 by 40,5, Again, in the Print Settings menu select the Margins/Layout menu and check the Borderless radio button,…
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Noon on the Beach
this image hinges on simplicity and distortion. The sun was directly overhead, leaving the shadow of the pole as a near-perfect sundial, slicing the centre of the frame from bottom to vanishing point. That shadow was the whole reason to shoot: absolute verticality rendered into graphic contrast on a near-featureless plane. The lens dictates the structure. At 16mm, lines bow. The horizon curves. Perspective exaggerates. I leaned into it—there’s no attempt to correct distortion in post. The intention was not to imitate a rectilinear frame, but to emphasise space as abstraction. The beach becomes a sphere, the sky a ceiling, and the tiny trace of buildings at the perimeter only…
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Damned Autofocus
I like this photo very much. The two travelers, mutually unbeknownst, stroke a pose like if they were on duty fashion models. Unfortunately, the Fujifulm X-E1 autofocus didn’t work fast enough and, as I’ve already told, zone-focusing is a pain in the neck without a properly marked focus-ring. Long live to Hasselblad, Zeiss, Leica and Nikon…
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Brain vs Camera
The picture on the left is what the camera saw. The picture on the right is what I had in mind while shooting. Thanks to Photoshop I’ve been able to bend the “objectivity” of the camera along the line of my creativity.
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A Fujifilm X-E1 Annoyance
The X-E1 is a good camera, though has some annoyances that make it less handy for Street Photography. Contrary to Leica, (some) Zeiss or (some) Nikon lenses, zone-focusing is not set on the lens barrel. You must do it either through the viewfinder or the LCD, and this makes problematic the switch from one technique to another. Same is true for aperture settings. Operating the camera one-handed, happened twice to me, led to a change of the image quality settings from RAW to Jpg. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware while shooting and I’ve wasted half a day in Barcelona getting inferior quality pictures.
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Street-Photographer’s eye side effect
Seeing the world through the Street-Photographer’s eye makes you more aware of your surroundings both at a conscious and unconscious, Zen-like, level. A side-effect of this state is that you can exploit-it for personal safety when traveling in risky places, like big stations where pickpockets are doing their tricks.
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Hanging Towels
Some photographs are not about events, people, or decisive moments. They are about the quiet visual structures that shape daily existence without asking for attention. This frame belongs to that category. Taken with a Fuji X-T1 fitted with a Summicron 50 mm lens, the image centres on a simple domestic gesture: a few pieces of laundry left to dry against a sun-worn wall. There is nothing exceptional in the scene itself. What makes it photographically interesting is the way ordinary elements align into a restrained composition that almost constructs itself.
