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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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Late-afternoon’s snack
…who knows what will be served for dinner?
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The Worst Moment to Fix a Shoe’s Problem
Caught on a descending escalator, mid-bend, mid-thought—this is the photograph of a decision made too late. Everything in this frame leans forward. The vanishing point pulls you down, hard, like gravity with intention. The blur on the metal steps mimics momentum. You can almost feel the hum of machinery and the silent urgency of descent. At the centre of it all: a man hunched over, trying to wrestle control over something small and unruly—perhaps a loose shoelace, perhaps something more symbolic. I didn’t plan this shot. It happened fast. A reflex. Shot handheld, low light, no time to think, just enough to feel. The imperfection—the motion blur, the noise, the…
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An Old-Style ATM
This frame came together in the blink of an eye — or perhaps more accurately, in the blur of one. No carefully plotted composition, no tripod, no second chance. Just a brief exchange at a café counter: a plate extended, a hand offering payment, the warmth of human transaction before contactless cards made it all vanish into invisible transfers. The motion blur here is both the flaw and the essence. Technically speaking, the shutter speed was far too slow for handheld shooting in this kind of lighting, resulting in softness across the entire image. If sharpness were the sole measure of photographic merit, this would be an immediate reject. But…
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No Tablet, No Problem
Airport Gate, Early Evening No screens. No earbuds. No glowing rectangles in sight. Just two people passing time with cards and conversation, waiting for a flight that’s probably delayed. The bench is metallic, cold. The lighting is flat. But between them, something human is happening—casual, quiet, and becoming increasingly rare. I didn’t stage this. I just noticed it. In a terminal where most people were curled into devices, these two were leaning forward, sharing space, actually looking at each other. He speaks, she listens. She gestures, he laughs. Their luggage is there, sure—but this moment isn’t about where they’re going. It’s about the pause before it. The photo isn’t sharp…
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Who is the mannequin?
… not sure.
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The Urban Chase
Not all of the urban chases, involve a couple of Alfa 159 trying to catch an Aston Martin. I shot low to the ground, framing the chase diagonally to emphasise tension. The perspective lines draw the viewer forward, while reflections and shadow gradients anchor the movement. Technically, exposure was demanding: harsh daylight, reflective surfaces, and metallic tones required a slight underexposure to preserve highlights. The result holds texture without burning whites. Compositionally, I favoured asymmetry. The cars don’t sit in comfort; they slice through balance. It’s a study in velocity disguised as stillness. If I could refine it, I’d add micro-contrast in the midtones for depth in asphalt and chrome.…
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So what?
There is a certain energy in candid street photography that cannot be replicated in a controlled setting, and So What?captures it in full stride. This frame offers a slice of urban life in the late afternoon, when the sun hangs low and the streets teem with a mix of idle chatter, cigarette breaks, and casual posturing. The photograph hinges on the central figure—a tall man in sunglasses, cigarette poised mid-gesture—whose slight tilt of the head and half-smirk seem to issue the titular challenge. To his left, another man, hand to face and gaze averted, projects an entirely different mood: contemplative, perhaps guarded. The third figure, seen only from behind, forms…
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A young Iron Maiden fan
He might never have seen them, but who cares? Metal is immortal…
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A stupid quarrell
This photo raised strong criticism in the mainstream media. A soldier deployed in an operational theater (war, in other words) wears a balaclava with the image of his all-day companion: the death. Apart the fact that the image is a skull and not the Death (whose iconography is fairly more articulated and complex) the question is: why should this photo matters? All the combatants, of all times, of all places in the world know best the value of inducing fear into the enemies’ minds by way of “icons” (armors, masks) and sounds (shouts, drums.) And, in parallel, every soldier must find his own way to handle the unbearable fear of…
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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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Sideways Through the Tunnel
This photograph was taken in the last leg of a trip to Rome, from inside my car while standing still because one of the many and usual traffic jam on the Tangenziale. I tried to have the road not to dominate the frame, fragmenting it, instead. A dark curve cuts through the image, separating two visual registers: the solid, static wall on the left and the receding tunnel of lights on the right. The image is less about travel than about perception while travelling. The motion blur and softness at the edges weren’t deliberate; they happened by chance. However, I like the result nonetheless. The photo would have felt dishonest…
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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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High-Tech Elder Care Tool
When I first saw this image, the irony of the title struck me. High-Tech Elder Care Tool—and yet, before us is a stark black-and-white photograph of a row of battered, utilitarian wheelchairs, one with “Geriatria” scrawled across its back. This is not the glossy, high-tech medical equipment we often see in promotional brochures, but the reality many encounter in underfunded wards and overstretched hospitals. From a compositional standpoint, the image benefits from its simplicity. The wheelchairs are positioned in a way that leads the viewer’s eye naturally from left to right. The empty, flat wall behind them offers no distraction, instead amplifying the focus on the subject matter. The angle,…
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Hard Spam
Sometimes spam doesn’t hide in your inbox. It glows in a pharmacy window. Shot on a quiet evening walk, this storefront display in Rome—or somewhere very much like it—caught my attention with the subtlety of a neon bullhorn. A perfectly literal interpretation of hard advertising: Viagra, Levitra, Cialis. Bold red font, urgent discounts, official decree cited. Street-level pharma meets street-level comedy. The scene is absurdly human. Framed by a closed shutter and a lonely Gaviscon box, the paper sign is taped like a last-minute school notice, but the message is anything but shy. There’s no algorithm, no clickbait. Just unapologetic, front-facing capital letters offering a prescription-strength punchline. It’s spam—but analogue. No filters,…
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A Contemporary-Art Installation?
I framed this shot as I found it — no rearranging, no cleanup, no staging. A raw space, forgotten in function but rich in visual contradiction. On one hand, it reads as abandonment: scattered rubbish, a deflated tyre, a dirty sink hanging by a thread, and a cupboard that’s outlived its utility. On the other, it holds a disconcerting balance of form and void, of placed objects that unintentionally echo the tropes of installation art. You could easily walk into a gallery and find something not unlike this, recontextualised and labelled with a price tag. The camera’s low perspective exaggerates the volume of the room, pulling the viewer into its…
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An update on the poor Canon EOS-M autofocus
It seems that by setting the autofocus mode on FlexiZoneAF centered the performance of the camera improves slightly. Still far from being usable for street-photography, though.
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A true friend
They enjoy their time together, as true friends ever should… No leash. No command. Just a gesture—and absolute trust. In this intimate frame, the lens captures a silent language spoken only between companions of a certain kind. The man’s hand rises gently, fingers curled, holding nothing yet holding everything that matters: attention, affection, history. The dog, massive and solemn, gazes upward with reverence—not out of obedience, but because it wants to. This is not a portrait of a pet and its owner. It is a document of friendship forged over countless days walked together, of shared silences and mutual understanding. The bond, invisible to the eye yet utterly present, transcends words. Loyalty…
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Canon EOS-M. Useless for Street-Photography
A friend of mine handed over a Canon EOS M with the 22 (35mm equiv.) lens so I thought to give it a try during a street-photography session in Rome. To put it short, the EOS M is a useless camera. I don’t enter into a tech-talk since there are already many on the internet, just focusing on the practical side. Though, for general purposes, the EOS M isn’t worse than other competitors, the autofocus – as clearly stated by many reviewer – is deadly slow, making impossible to shoot from the hip and the touch screen often messes up the settings while “palming” the camera. Furthermore, there is no…
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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…
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Abruzzo’s made Coke??
Didn’t know that Coca-cola was a speciality of Abruzzo…
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The Long Way Up
I’ve always been drawn to stairways — not for their architectural elegance, but for what they suggest about human effort. This photograph, taken in a steep Italian hill town, is less about the stones and more about the person halfway up, leaning forward into the climb, each step a small battle against gravity and fatigue. From a compositional standpoint, I deliberately placed the vanishing point at the top of the stairs, where the light spills in from the open street beyond. The walls on either side act as vertical guides, forcing the viewer’s eye along the incline toward the lone figure. The choice of black and white wasn’t an afterthought;…
