@Rome Maker Faire – 1

I made this photograph during Rome’s Maker Fair, where the noise of servo motors and animated enthusiasm filled the air. The scene, however, was quiet. Not in sound, but in intent. A man and a machine facing each other, both wearing headsets, locked in an interaction so human in posture it almost defied the clinical setting around them.

From a technical perspective, I chose a shallow depth of field to detach the primary interaction from the noise in the background. I wanted the robot and the man—particularly their faces and hands—to carry the emotional weight. The focus falls on the robot’s articulated fingers and the man’s hands raised in some instinctive gesture of expression or emphasis. Maybe he was explaining something, maybe listening. Maybe both. That ambiguity is the photo’s strength.

The artificial lighting was uneven, and I had to expose for the midtones on the human subject’s skin without blowing out the bright whites of the robot’s arm. The result, in post, required selective tonal adjustment. The shadows sit close, but not heavy. The highlights retain shape. I was careful not to overcorrect. I didn’t want this image too polished.

Compositionally, the diagonal line of gaze and gesture draws the eye from left to right, leading from man to machine. The background noise of people and signage is recognisably distracting, but it also situates the scene. This isn’t a lab or a concept studio. It’s a crowded, semi-chaotic slice of reality—where curiosity and technology meet without ceremony.

I don’t shoot tech as spectacle. What interested me here wasn’t the robot’s design or the man’s role in the event. It was the symmetry of intent: both participants leaning in, listening, reaching. We don’t know who’s teaching whom, or whether anything is really being communicated. And yet, it is unmistakably a conversation.