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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…
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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’s easier to tell what a photograph is not than to explain what it is. This frame, taken outside a small tabaccheria, is a case in point. It’s not sharp — the slight blur suggests either a slow shutter speed with handheld movement or an unintentional misfocus. It’s not correctly exposed either — the bright areas, particularly the pavement and parts of the foliage, are overexposed, washing out detail and flattening the scene. Compositionally, it struggles to find an anchor. The woman in the doorway and the man at the vending machine might form the core of a story, but the foreground foliage, tilted horizon, and lack of depth…
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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
Last night, at what should have been an intimate tango exhibition, I was reminded how delicate the relationship between photographer, performer, and audience really is. It’s a balance of presence and discretion — a dance of our own, if you will — and when one party missteps, the whole atmosphere can falter. The image I took here is less about the aesthetics of tango than about an interruption to its magic. In the foreground stands a photographer, camera raised, entirely absorbed in his task. The moon glows softly above him, the darkness swallowing most of the scene, but it’s clear enough to see the intent concentration on his face. Off…
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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. Tips and Results For Street-Photography
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
I made this photograph at night, when the fairground lights were at their brightest and the air had that electric hum of machinery, music, and laughter. The ride—small spacecraft rising and falling in uneven rhythm—looked as if it were trying to lift free of the noise below. The name Luna Park glowed behind them, an invitation and a declaration all at once.
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EOS-M. An Act of Fairness
I’ve been anything but gentle in my assessment of the Canon EOS-M’s street photography credentials. In the chaos of fast-moving urban life, it has always felt a step behind — hesitant where others are decisive. But fairness demands balance, and in the stillness of landscape work, this little mirrorless manages to surprise. This frame, taken with the humble 18-55mm stabilised kit lens, shows the EOS-M in its element. The river’s current twists and glides across the frame, textures shifting from silky blur to glassy detail, the greens of moss and the reddish undertones of the rocks holding their place against the moving water. The stabilisation works in quiet partnership with…
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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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Who wants to live forever?
I found this sign in a narrow alley in southern Italy, somewhere between a forgotten tabaccheria and a shuttered photo lab. The kind of place where time no longer hurries. “Kodak films in vendita qui” it proclaims—still, stubbornly, as if refusing to accept the world has moved on. The once-bold red letters are now softened by decades of sun, rain, and indifference. The plastic casings holding each letter—cracked, leaning, imperfect—speak more truth than any marketing slogan ever could. It’s a ghost sign, still selling hope in an age when its promise has nearly vanished. This isn’t just a relic of analogue photography—it’s a whisper of what we thought would last…
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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.
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Forgotten Bike In A Forgotten House
I found the bike in a room whose doors had not been opened in years. Paint flaked from the plaster. Light slipped through a broken pane and laid a clean rectangle across the floor. The bike stood where someone once left it mid-errand, an everyday object promoted by neglect into relic. I built the frame around planes and diagonals. The window sits high and left to keep the eye moving across the shaft of light to the handlebars, then down the front wheel to the scuffed tiles. Floorboards and wall seams act as guides, converging behind the saddle to hold the gaze. I kept a little headroom above the bars…
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Don’t Forget!
It’s the moment between words that makes this picture. You can almost hear the shop owner’s voice, half command, half reminder, as the young man in the doorway glances back. The raised hand, the turned head, the slight lean forward — everything about his body language says, “You’ve got this, but don’t mess it up.” The frame itself is tight, almost conspiratorial. We’re standing just behind another figure — smart jacket, cigarette in hand — as if we’ve stumbled into a private exchange. That foreground figure acts as an anchor and a barrier at the same time: we’re part of the scene, yet removed from it, observing through a filter…
