-
Seeking Directions
is a complex task, not only on the streets.
-
The Real Street Photographer: Bold and Fearless
I was walking along the seafront when this little scene unfolded: two women, a dachshund, and a child armed with a compact camera. No hesitation, no awkwardness — he simply stepped into the moment and claimed it, directing his subjects with the quiet authority only the very young can get away with. It was pure, unfiltered street photography, stripped of the adult self-consciousness that so often blunts spontaneity. Technically, the light was harsh, the midday sun cutting strong shadows across the paving and lending the image a slightly brittle feel. The Leica M9, with its CCD sensor, tends to emphasise contrast in such conditions, and here it works in my…
-
A lighter
…left for somebody to come, or hidden by someone who just left?
You May Also Like
Watching the Eiffel Tower
In praise of ‘cheap’ lenses for ‘pro’ works
The Spinners
-
Hard work
I took this photograph on a blisteringly hot summer day, the sort of day when the air seems to shimmer and the beach hums with the sounds of leisure — waves, laughter, and the distant hum of radios. But while most people lounged under neat rows of parasols, there was this man, moving with quiet determination, his back to the sea. The scene was visually irresistible: the repeating pattern of red and orange parasols receding into the distance, the bright blue rescue boat and the vivid plastic sunshades forming an almost painterly composition. The man, central in the frame, breaks the symmetry. His white shirt catches the light, contrasting sharply…
-
Who Dares Wins
I took this photograph on a grey, wind-bitten afternoon when the sea felt restless and the light had flattened into steel. What caught my attention wasn’t the surf but the contradiction: a warning sign standing firm in the sand, and a man walking past it as if it didn’t exist. He held a turquoise umbrella, not open but swinging at his side — a quiet rebellion against both weather and authority. The tension between rule and gesture made the image. The sign, reading Attenzione – Pericolo. Divieto di attraversamento / Scavalcamento / Transito, is bureaucratic, absolute. Yet the man ignores it, tracing his own path along the forbidden shore. It…
-
The Odd Couple
This shot came together almost accidentally. I had been tracking the pigeons on the sand, their erratic movements making them elusive subjects, when the man entered the frame and sat down. His stillness was in complete contrast to their nervous pacing — two worlds side by side, sharing the same strip of beach without truly interacting. From a compositional point of view, the layering works: foreground sand, mid-ground human subject, and the blurred stretch of sea behind him. The diagonals created by the man’s posture and the birds’ orientation give the image a subtle sense of direction, even though nothing dramatic is happening. It’s quiet, almost muted in mood. Technically,…
-
Beach in black
There is a certain stubbornness in going to the shore at night with a camera and expecting to bring something back other than disappointment. The sea, under moonlight, doesn’t offer you light so much as it withholds it, forcing you to work with the barest scraps. This image was taken under those conditions — no artificial illumination, only the moon high above, its reflection tearing a path across the water. I composed with the reflection as the spine of the frame, letting it run vertically to draw the viewer’s eye from the immediate foreground into the distant horizon. The exposure was a balancing act: enough to reveal the texture of…
