Happy New Year to everybody! I’m sure you are all projected to the future and your good resolutions:I want to take one last step back and make a list of all the best articles in my blog that you may have missed. I wrote so many things about photography and if I have to look back I feel comfortable with Living is easy with one eye closed. It dosn’t have great numbers, a lot of visitors or followers, but I love people that read this blog and whoever is here with me so thank you. I don’t need 100 or 1000 visits per day, I write it for me, to pour out my thoughts about photography (and sometimes about life). So I’m happy with it! Here a list with some interesting posts, if you like it feel free to share one of them on your channels and social media, it will help the growth of this blog (but it’s not my goal, as I said before). Have a wonderful 2023!
Taking Pictures is Not Enough: There is always a moment, I think, in everyday life, when we stay still for a moment thinking: why we do what we do? Why we choose to do that? In my experience, why avoid a sure job, a financial security, a peaceful routine made by work and comforts, for a life full of incertitudes? For a daily life always full of doubts, where monthly earnings can be high, ok or sometimes low, without any sureness? The answer can be only one: Life is too short to waste it in something we don’t like.
Print Your Photos!: Open your folders in your computer: how many images are there? In these years everything is a digital file, we can create an album on Facebook and show our images to our friends. My question is: how many of you print their photos? Not every photo, of course, but at least a selection of them. I think that a picture begins to live only when it’s printed, when you can touch it with your hands, when you can observe it on a wall, between the pages of a book or as a gift for someone we love.
Our Life is the Best Subject to Photograph: Every photographer once (at least!) said “I don’t have enough time to take photos”. That is bullshit, because we think that we can only take photos if we travel to exotic places, if we have a super interesting lifestyle or if we have the best cameras and lenses.
The Art of Superimposition: Sometimes a picture talks, but also a picture needs someone within to talk! If a picture talks, think how much four or five pictures could tell when put together in a unique image. Superimposing photos is like an art that needs creativity, fantasy, curiosity, most of all, lots of patience. It’s like a puzzle, an enigma to solve; a solution exists, the right combination exists, but we have to find it.
Photography Multiplies Life: “What do you feel when you think that your photos are in other people’s house?”. A very good question. In that moment I’ve thought about a lot of different things, but the first one was the utopian idea to multiply my existance. Time goes on and unfortunately I can’t travel everywhere in the world, so my pictures are like “Ambassadors of my Life”.
How to Build Your Own Style in Photography: I was reading an interesting article by Eric Kim: he suggests to combine your passions and your different interests in photography, in order to build something new and, most important, something really personal.
10 Beautiful Spots To Take Photos In Rome: Rome. The Eternal City. One of the most beautiful cities in the world. Maybe the best one to visit: we have sun, delicious food, tons of history, nice people and, for a photographer, incredible spots to take pictures. I tried to write a list with ten beautiful places you shouldn’t miss in your roman trip.
Milagros Caturla, the Spanish Vivian Maier: In 2001 an american tourist from Seattle, Tom Sponheim, went to Barcelona with his wife. In a flea market next to La Sagrada Familia he found a stack of negatives on a table. Tom took a look at them and he saw that they were well exposed, so he bought the envelope with the film for 3.50 dollars. Once at home in the States, he tried to scan a random picture and it was a very good sample of street photography: a young girl behind a bench where two old ladies are talking. But Tom understood to be in front a master of photography when he found another amazing picture with three priests walking near the Cathedral…
Photography Aphorisms: Sometimes there is nothing like a good aphorism to find the right motivation, mostly when you’re tired and your passion is going down… Here a list of quotes about photography, in english and in italian. Enjoy!
How To Keep Your Passion For Photography Alive When You’re Facing a Crisis: Do you remember when you begun to take photos? You were full of enthusiasm, you used to take pictures to everything, everybody in every moment. Then, when you get more experience, you begin to shoot less, but the quality of your pictures is better. Finally, mostly when photography becomes your job, you have to face a crisis, a lack of motivation slides inside your brain, you are sick of your camera and bored to take pictures. But don’t worry, it’s pretty normal and there are a lot of ways to overcome this crisis and get new inspirations.
It’s Cold Out of the Shower: Sometimes being a photographer is a bit like when you take a shower. A jet of hot water, the muscles relax, the pores open and you don’t think about anything for a moment. Photography is not so different and when you have a job to do or a project to follow the feeling is very similar: every shot is like hot water in the coldest winter, but like when you are in the shower, even in photography there is that moment when you have to turn off the water and take the bathrobe. And just at that moment a small wave of frost arrives that freezes your soul. The same chill you feel when you have a camera in your hand and you can’t photograph anything.
I’m Sick of Instagram and Its Algorithm: This post is about Instagram: is it really good for photographers? There are a lot of pros of course, but also a lot of negative things. I’m a bit sick of being slave of the algorithm. First of all: my feed is full of ads, it’s really difficult to scroll the home without crashing into an advertisement. Our feeds are totally “polluted” and watching the photos is becoming a challenge. Gain exposure is hard: you have to fight with the right choice of hashtags, you have to tag other accounts hoping in a sharing, you have to spend a lot of time for what? To have some new followers? And if you do so, gratifications are few. Doesn’t worth it.
How I Create My Multiple Exposure Artworks: If now I can live with my art, I have to thank Turkish photographer Jak Baruh and his multiple exposures: I found his works ten years ago in a museum in Istanbul and they were a spark of inspiration that brought me to begin my famous series Urban Melodies. In the first half of 2022, a beautiful couple from Austalia commissionated me a Multiple Exposure work to realize in Antibes, France. It was the most complex and structured image I’ve ever created and now I want to unravel the mistery and show you every layer of this beautiful artwork.
Is Asking Strangers For A Portrait So Dreadful?: Is asking strangers for a portrait so dreadful? Probably not, according to a lot of photographers that usually do Street Portraits in their life. I always felt a fascination for people and when I see a project based on portraits of strangers met on the street, I dream to do something like that. I think often about my photography and how can improve myself, so a few days ago I asked a question to FlakPhoto Network on Facebook.
Photography and the Obsession with the Passage of Time: I’m a photographer and the passage of time is perhaps my greatest obsession. The two things cannot but be connected. Photography is therefore a job, but also a therapy. The only solution to my thoughts and maybe the only moment in which I delude myself that I can control time. Pure illusion, but also a kind of magic.
Living is easy with one eye closed 