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Outdoor Aperitif
I shot this on a cool evening in Brussels, with the last of the daylight just beginning to retreat behind slate rooftops. The city was shifting gears—post-work fatigue blending with the early stirrings of nocturnal energy. I had the Leica M9 slung across my shoulder, a camera that’s more than a tool—it forces you to see with intent, to commit before pressing the shutter. Paired with the Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2.8, it draws sharpness out of corners and translates contrast with a crisp, unfussy tone that suited the moment perfectly. The scene was already composed for me: clustered chairs, half-filled glasses, side conversations in mid-stream. No one posed. No one…
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Street Of New York… Possibly
The image was taken in Italy. But remove the signage, blur the language on the air conditioning units, and this could just as easily be Queens or Brooklyn — any back alley where heat pumps hum above cracked asphalt and fading stucco. That universality was the point. Place becomes anonymous when its elements are global. I composed it as a frame within a frame — the corridor of walls leading the eye to the vanishing point, while the pipes, units, and rust act as punctuation marks. The textures do the talking: peeling paint, patched cement, and the industrial clutter that cities never clean up because no one looks down these…
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The Flying Dutchman… a sort of
I made this shot standing at the edge of a small harbour after midnight, the kind of hour where everything becomes abstract unless it’s lit. The boat, isolated and slightly listing, sat in complete stillness, half-moored, half-abandoned. It wasn’t moving, but it didn’t feel settled either. That in-betweenness is what caught my attention. The frame leaned heavily on underexposure—on purpose. I wanted the boat to emerge from the blackness like a memory, not an object. I metered for the faintest highlights and let the rest fall into noise and void. What the image lacks in tonal range, it gains in atmosphere. The blacks are thick, the shadows granular, and the…
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Spectrum
A broken LCD panel, screen blacked out except for vertical bands of coloured light, frozen mid-collapse. I framed the shot in total darkness, using a tripod, low ISO, and long exposure to extract every nuance of the emitted RGB shards. The left stack is dominant—dense, pulsing, lines tightly packed, terminating in a soft arc of failure. The right set echoes it with less mass, more space between columns. Between them, void. The black isn’t absence—it’s the backdrop of digital death. This isn’t a glitch aesthetic. It’s material damage, turned into colour structure. Technically, I shot at ISO 100, f/5.6, 2.5 seconds. Manual focus. White balance locked to daylight to prevent…
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The Temple of Justice
From an elevated perspective, the grand staircase of the Italian Court of Cassation descends in perfect symmetry. Framed by neoclassical columns and lit by reverent lamplight, this space does not merely lead—it ascends, conceptually, toward the divine. The title, The Temple of Justice, is not metaphorical hyperbole, but a statement of function and form. This is not a courthouse. It is a sanctuary. Justice, as the image suggests, is not a secular procedure. It is a liturgy. It unfolds with rituals, vestments, invocation of higher powers, and the solemnity of faith. The robes, the benches, the altars of the law—these mimic the language of churches. And the Court of Cassation, the…
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Kite Surfing, Again
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Waiting for (Supreme) Justice
I took this while waiting, quietly, in Rome’s Corte di Cassazione—a place where silence isn’t just expected, it’s structural. Every arch, bench, and cornice feels designed to mute the outside world. What struck me wasn’t the grandeur (although the sculptural work is unapologetically ornate), but the emptiness. For all the architectural posturing, justice here is often a matter of waiting. The benches, scuffed and rigid, are the only human-scale elements in the frame. They sit below a frieze of muscular allegories and baroque pomp, a reminder of the institutional weight bearing down on the people beneath. The image is composed to reflect this—foreground arch framing the frieze, a horizontal band…
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Ashtray
The scene was quiet, almost too still for such a monumental location. From the balcony of the Court of Cassation, Rome’s ornate facade stretched before me, its stonework carved with faces that have watched over decades of political and judicial tides. And yet, in the foreground, resting on a cracked, timeworn surface, sat a simple glass ashtray. The juxtaposition was almost absurd—this object of everyday habit placed against the backdrop of one of Italy’s most imposing institutions. Framing the shot, I wanted to preserve that contrast. The ashtray dominates the foreground, crisp in focus, while the grand entrance behind it softens into blur. This use of shallow depth of field…
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The Watchdogs
High on a crumbling brick wall, two cats hold their ground. One, a tabby, sits upright, eyes locked on the camera with the unwavering stare of an appointed sentinel. The other, black and white, looks away, uninterested in the act of vigilance, its attention claimed by something out of frame. Behind them, the backdrop tells another story: a weathered industrial wall, its whitewash worn thin, the rusted blades of an old ventilation fan frozen in their casing. Wires run haphazardly across the façade, relics of a building that has seen better days. It’s an unlikely setting for such a scene, yet the pairing of living presence and decaying architecture feels…
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The Relentless Lawyer
Standing in Court, no matter what! Some portraits are taken in the studio, with light sculpted and poses rehearsed. Others, like this one, are captured in the quiet fissures of reality—moments where the weight of a life’s work shows itself unprompted. The old lawyer’s face carries the texture of decades in courtrooms, each wrinkle etched by cross-examinations, verdicts, and long nights parsing the fine print of justice. His robe hangs loosely now, a little heavier than before, as though the fabric has absorbed the gravity of the battles fought. The light, cool and unforgiving, falls across his profile, illuminating both the weariness and the fire that coexist in his expression.…
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Settled in the wrong place
There’s a jolt in seeing something so deeply tied to heat and aridity draped in snow. The prickly pear cactus, its fleshy paddles dusted white, looks almost embarrassed – as if caught wearing the wrong clothes for the season. This is a photograph about displacement, but not in a melodramatic sense; rather, it’s a quiet document of the absurdities nature sometimes hands us. From a compositional standpoint, the image benefits from its layered structure. The cactus dominates the foreground on the left, its irregular shapes and textures pulling the viewer in. Mid-ground, a smaller shrub offers a softer counterpoint, while the horizon – faint and blurred – separates the white…
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Just a Bench (or a Sacrificial Altar?)
When I photographed this bench under a fresh layer of snow, I was struck by its dual identity. On the one hand, it is a piece of public furniture, sculpted concrete shaped into undulating curves to invite rest. On the other, in the starkness of winter light and the thin veneer of frost, it becomes something else—an object that could belong to a ritual, its surface reading like a stone altar abandoned to the elements. The faint streaks of rust along the side even suggest traces of something spilled, though of course it is only iron leaching into the weather. From a technical standpoint, I chose to let the bench…
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Becoming a Human Tripod
An often forgotten topic in the photography schools and courses is the physical (I would say, physiological) side of the game. True, a Leica Noctilux and a Leica M can deliver exceptionally sharp images, but if your hands tremble or your body wobbles, no gear, no matter the cost, can save your shot from being shaken. Ideally, a perfectly steady shot would require a tripod. Yes you can tweak the ISOs and/or the aperture but this is a trade off with image quality , so we’re back to the opening statement: a steady shot needs a tripod. But the truth is that none of us – pros included – can…
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Where Are Skilifts Supposed to Be?
I took this photograph on a surreal winter morning when the Adriatic coastline had been transformed into something closer to the Alps than a seaside promenade. The skier, moving steadily away from me, became the anchor for the scene — his posture calm, almost resigned, as though he knew full well there would be no skilifts waiting for him ahead. From a compositional standpoint, I wanted the perspective lines to work hard here. The lamp posts, the pavement edges, even the faint ski tracks converge toward the centre, guiding the eye deeper into the image. The figure is positioned just off-centre, allowing the street to breathe while still holding the…
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Happy New Year
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Don’t They Drink Tea, Instead?
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The Choir Master
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Interplay
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Traffic Master
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A Focused (or Sad) Violinist
There are moments in photography when ambiguity becomes its greatest strength. A Focused (or Sad) Violinist captures one of those moments—a fleeting expression caught between concentration and melancholy, leaving the viewer unsure which emotion truly takes precedence. The composition is deliberately layered, with the foreground figure—out of focus—providing a soft frame for the central subject. This technique draws the eye directly to the violinist, whose gaze is fixed slightly to the side, lost either in the music or in a private thought. The choice to work with a shallow depth of field accentuates her presence while allowing the surrounding players to dissolve into a gentle blur, reinforcing the sense of…
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A Pensive Nun
I took this photo during a quiet moment in a Roman church. I wasn’t looking for drama. I wasn’t even looking for a nun. I was watching light — soft, diffused, the kind that reveals more than it conceals. Then she shifted her weight, her arm fell to the bench, and the composition drew itself. The image balances solitude and collective presence. She sits in isolation, yet she’s surrounded. Everyone in that frame is turned inward — praying, grieving, thinking, hiding. It’s an ensemble of introspection, and she anchors it without knowing. I shot this on film. Ilford HP5 pushed to 1600. The grain works with the silence; it has…
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Up from the Waterline
As a photographer, I have always been drawn to the power of perspective—how the choice of vantage point can turn a simple set of stairs into a visual narrative. Up from the Waterline achieves precisely this, transforming an ordinary urban ascent into a scene layered with mood, tension, and a touch of mystery. Framed from the bottom of the stairwell, the composition draws the eye upward in a natural, almost subconscious motion. The heavy shadows along the concrete walls create a narrowing funnel of light, directing attention to the top landing where a burst of colour—a pot of flowers—awaits. This sudden contrast between the dark, gritty stone and the warm,…
