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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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Lost Cigarettes at Piazza Affari
The Milan Stock-Exchange is just closed, another stressful day is gone, so are the cigarettes. The Milan Stock Exchange has just closed. Another day of trading — of numbers, speculation, tension, and relief — is over. The square begins to exhale. The crowds thin, footsteps fade, and the traces of human presence remain in small, almost invisible ways. Here, in a shallow puddle on the cobblestones of Piazza Affari, the day’s residue is quietly recorded: cigarette butts, scraps, and the inverted grandeur of a neoclassical façade. I was drawn to the way the water held both the building’s form and the detritus of the day in a single frame. The reflection, sharp…
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A Fashion Shop in Milan
In a fashion shop is always hard to tell the difference beween a model and a store clerk.
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Let’s get the party started…
Fishing boats have a way of announcing themselves well before they reach the harbour wall. The sound of the engine carries over the water, but it’s the birds that really give them away — a moving cloud of wings and calls, circling, swooping, waiting for the scraps that will inevitably be thrown overboard. This shot catches the “Nuova Zita” in that precise moment of return, driving straight toward me, bow cutting through the water, foam rising in a perfect V. I chose a dead-centre composition, a choice some might consider too rigid, but here it felt essential. The boat’s symmetry — red trim framing the white hull, the vertical mast…
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The Guardian
Not scaring as a Pitbull would, but still deserving to be handled with care… He didn’t move. Not even when I approached with the camera. Not even when I paused to adjust the lens. He just stared—calm, unblinking, sure of his place. This photo was taken outside a closed wooden structure. Maybe a seasonal shack, maybe a beachside store. The railings were weathered, the wood silvered by sun and salt. Everything about the setting felt unfinished, in-between. Except for him. The black cat sat at the centre like he’d been assigned the role. Not hiding, not curious—just there. Positioned perfectly in the geometry of the fence, flanked by empty space…
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A Portrait on the Nasdaq Building
I took this photograph in the year 2000, standing in front of the Nasdaq building and staring at a giant portrait of a man whose name I never learned. The caption read “July 1985” — perhaps the date of his death — and the grainy, blown-up image suggested an older video still. In the upper-left of the portrait, there were shelves lined with what looked like vinyl records. That detail nudged me toward thinking he might have been a musician or someone who worked in the recording industry. But it’s speculation. What I could say with certainty was that his expression stopped me in my tracks. There was a strange…
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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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Slow Walk at Mulberry St.
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Late Night Arrival at Bertinoro’s Castle
There’s something about fog that eats light and sound in equal measure. At Bertinoro that night, the mist rolled in thick and silent, swallowing the medieval walls until they were no more than looming shapes. The only figure breaking the gloom was this woman, striding toward the castle gate with a purpose that suggested she hoped — perhaps against reason — that someone inside might still be awake. I shot this in black and white not as an afterthought, but because the scene demanded it. Colour would have been irrelevant here — the atmosphere was all about tonal gradation, shadow, and grain. Yes, grain. This isn’t the crisp, low-noise look…
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Leaving The Actor’s Studio
No, the title is not a misspell. To perform as a true artist, the Actors Studio must actually become an actor’s studio. Shot handheld on a cold night in New York, I framed this outside the famous 44th Street façade of The Actors Studio. What drew me wasn’t the name, but the irony held in the glow above the door. Big, institutional lettering—THE ACTORS STUDIO—brightly lit, looming. Yet below it, a single man stands, barely visible, caught in the diffused downlight from the marquee. It wasn’t staged. He just was there—half-shadowed, alone, waiting. Technically, this is a push to the edge. ISO was high, grain heavy. Shadows crush into black. Highlights…
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Cold Night, Hot Drink
A cold night calls for a hot drink…
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Next Time, Maybe…
I made this image in one of those narrow alleys in central Brussels, where restaurants compete not just with food but with neon, colour, and attention. It’s visual overload by design. Menus on easels, signs screaming prices, waiters halfway between invitation and insistence. But what caught me wasn’t the display—it was the woman walking straight through, uninterested, unmoved. She wasn’t choosing where to eat. She was choosing not to. The photo hinges on that gesture. Her hands are in motion, her shoulders hunched from the cold, her gaze slightly lowered. She becomes the counterpoint to the street’s whole premise. All this effort around her, and none of it lands. That’s…
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The Lost Battle
Against the New York traffic, the controllers themselves, contended in vain.
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Fisherman’s Friend
When the course is set back to the dock, especially at night, there is no better companion than the reassuring glow of the harbour’s twin beacons. These masts, painted in unmistakable red and green, have long served as silent guides, their geometry as familiar to mariners as the constellations above. This photograph, titled Fisherman’s Friend, plays not only on a brand name but on the enduring role of such structures in the choreography of safe returns. From a compositional standpoint, the image centres on the red mast, giving it commanding presence against a pastel-hued evening sky. The placement is deliberate—slightly forward and to the left of the green twin in…
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Life And Work On A Fishing Boat
I took this just before dusk in a working harbour, where boats aren’t romanticised—they’re tools, piled with other tools, patched, rusted, functional. Riviera isn’t posing. It’s docked, burdened with skiffs, plastic crates, folded nets, and the quiet fatigue of a long shift at sea. The composition pushes tight against the frame, stacking hulls on hulls, blocking any clear horizon. The visual noise—cables, ropes, red crane arm—disrupts the scene enough to pull you into its clutter. The sky, soft and forgiving in the background, does little to alleviate the heaviness of the vessel. That contrast matters. Technically, the image holds despite the mixed lighting. The fading day cast a bluish tint…
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A Calm Person
In a small village close to the mountains, during an outdoor celebration, I’ve been stricken by the calm of this woman. The troubles of life, at list for once, are light-years far.
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A Tribute to An Old Friend
The Lord Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum has been my first “real” computer, and the only one I really enjoyed. Now he (he, not “it”) proudly rests on a special place of my firm’s library, looking at his dumb heirs. Its rubber keys, some worn and chipped, still carry the traces of countless hours of programming and gaming. The rainbow stripe on the corner is faded but unmistakable, a design detail that anchors the memory of early home computing. Technically, the picture is a straightforward still life. The framing is tight, emphasising the object’s place among dictionaries and manuals, suggesting both its functional and cultural weight. The exposure is even, ensuring the…
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What an Elegant Chocolatier!
Brussels wears its chocolate heritage like a badge of honour, and this image captures that sense of refinement and indulgence with a quietly cinematic touch. The composition is cleverly split between the interior glow of the shop and the poised figure outside. The chocolatier, dressed in an understated but impeccably tailored suit, stands just beyond the threshold, his profile framed by the shop’s edge. The counterpoint to his form is the rich, inviting display of chocolates, boxes, and ribboned confections bathed in warm light inside. This juxtaposition — cool tones on the left, warm tones on the right — creates both visual and thematic tension: the disciplined elegance of the…
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Through the Fog
The scene presented itself with no warning — one of those rare occasions where nature performs and the only real challenge is not missing the moment. I was walking through the hills when the mist thickened just enough to conceal and reveal in equal measure. What compelled me to stop wasn’t the tree, nor the fog, but the tension introduced by the artificial red plastic line cutting across the landscape — mundane, even ugly, yet unavoidably dominant in the composition. Framing this shot required restraint. Too wide, and the mood would dissipate. Too tight, and the context would vanish. The key lay in placing the tree just off-centre, allowing the…
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Blob
I definitely have a thing for fountains…
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Welcome in the Twilight Zone
The fog was so dense that the lift seemed to be travelling through nothing rather than toward somewhere. Depth, distance, and direction became uncertain. Only the chairs, suspended and slowly moving, provided any sense of continuity. The skier in the frame wasn’t performing for anyone. They were simply sitting, waiting to arrive at the top, wrapped in that quiet concentration that comes with navigating a landscape you can no longer fully see. The gesture of the hand near the face could be a wave, an adjustment of goggles, or simply a moment of stillness. I didn’t need to know which. Technically, the image is defined by absence rather than clarity.…
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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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Welcome in the New (?) Year
The year is new, but the job is same old. Work hard, earn your day.
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Stantsted Lounge’s Chairs
I took this photo just after the final boarding call echoed through the terminal, the kind of stillness that only follows a rush. The lounge was cleared in minutes — all urgency gone, replaced by silence. The chairs, once wrapped in the inertia of travel, now stood like architectural punctuation against the faux-wood paneling, waiting for the next wave of restless travellers. I framed the shot at a low angle, intentionally compressing the line of stools to push a rhythm into the scene — one repetition after the other. It’s a simple structure, but the legs of the stools, criss-crossing over each other, create a mesh of shadow geometry on…
