Click and Drag, the amazing xkcd cartoon that went online a few days ago, was fascinating and threw me back to the worlds I used to explore when I was a kid (through videogames obviously).

I selected a few places and made 1920x1080 captures to use as wallpapers for my 24" monitor. They’re clean, not distracting, and inspirationals (the one I use as a backdrop for my writing is The Cave).

I did a few experiments with the camera over the past two weekends. Thought to share a few pictures here, even if they are not particularly inspired shots. But if you’re trying to find how damn good is the D7000 sensor, just look at the green tomato shot.

All shots taken at “Il Montale”, Sala Baganza (Parma), with my usual gear (Nikon D7000, 35mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4, Tokina 12-24mm f/4).

Quando andavo in moto mi hanno sempre appassionato le gare di endurance; 6 ore di Sebring, 24 ore di Les Mans, fari nella lunga notte, tutte cose che mi affascinavano.

Ho smesso di andare in moto ma le gare di durata non hanno mai smesso di attirarmi. E quest’anno sono stato trascinato da Stefano a fare una 24 ore sì, ma con le biciclette.

Si tratta della 24h più conosciuta e famosa in Italia; una gara che attrae anche quelli che a fare cross-country mai ci penserebbero, associando la disciplina a sterratoni privi di tecnicità, salite estenuanti, biciclettina esili esili, poco divertimento e molta fatica. La 24h di Finale però è qualcosa a sé nel panorama cross-country.

I find it difficult to take interesting/compelling/creative photos of familiar places. So what I did this time was just to take random snaps, without thinking too much, without trying to sample all the possible aspects of a place.

They may not show what the true Rosamarina is: to do that, I should have taken photos of:

• all the fancy people who spend their holidays there, pretending to be more than they are
• the delicious Ciccio’s ice creams
• all the scooters and cars zipping by making this holiday resort as busy and dangerous as a city and so unfriendly to walkers and cyclists

I should have done this if I wanted to give an objective view of Rosamarina but in the end I decided that I didn’t care about this; what I wanted was only to mark a specific moment in my life.

I haven’t been able to publish these ‘weekly snaps’ for the past three weeks, but here I am with number 5; this time I’ll start off with a couple of cliché photos.

Boschi di Carrega, Parma. Nikon D7000, 35mm f/1.8G; f/4 and 1/800s. Shooting something new in the woods is incredibly frustrating, unless you are in some North American National Park, with oblique sun rays lighting up a thousand years old tree. But I wasn’t in Yosemite or Sequoia National Park, it was midday, and yet I wanted to capture something fresh. The result is not entirely satisfying mostly because of the slightly nervous bokeh of the Nikon 35 1.8G. Some parts of the leaves are also out of focus.

Lately I’ve been reading quite a lof of articles about parenting. Most of them are book reviews but I did not read any of these books though¹, which could mean: (A) I’m a bit shallow, (B) stressed out New Yorkers, overproductive Chinese immigrants, rich Californians are not people that I feel entitled to give me directions on how to raise my kid (even though I acknowledge their superior education and intelligence and that their sons and daughters will surely rule the world).

This week’s post has been delayed by some very expected news.

I’ll start off with two variations of a similar photo I published in Weekly snaps #3; the first is a classical black and white, the second a slightly toned black and white.

Then I have three photos which were the first ones shot with the Nikon D7000; they were very poor in terms of exposure accuracy but then I was very surprised at the amount of stuff I could recover in post processing; a truly wonderful sensor inside the D7000.

Fatemi lasciare un segnalibro in questa data, perché Valentina è nata oggi, 4 agosto 2012.

##di getto

uscire dall’ospedale, rientrare a casa con Giulia e la bambina e pensare che d’ora in avanti ci sarà sempre una terza persona in casa.

incantarsi davanti al suo visino, ingobbirsi per starle vicino; annusarla, sentire il suo odore.

non essere più in grado di giudicare obiettivamente se la bimba è brutta o è bella; per me è bellissima, non capisco come si possa dire altrimenti ma poi sento qualcuno che parla di “ragnetto” o “meletta”. È piccolina ed è bellissima ed evidentemente ci sono cose che non si possono valutare oggettivamente.

[Click here for italian version.]

It’s been quite some time now that I have gone back to DSLRs, but the little Panasonic GF1 is still a constant presence in my backpack. In the meantime, Panasonic has churned out countless other iterations on the same micro four/thirds concept; but to me it has somehow watered down the concept and only the latest one (GX1) seems to be the true successor of the GF1.

[Click here for italian version.]

È da quasi un anno che sono tornato al mondo reflex con una Nikon D7000, ma la piccola Panasonic GF1 è ancora una presenza costante nel mio zaino. Nel frattempo sono uscite altre cento iterazioni della Panasonic sul tema mirrorless / micro quattroterzi ma solo l’ultima (GX1) mi pare la vera evoluzione della GF1¹.

Pubblico quindi solo ora, fuori tempo massimo², alcune impressioni e note sulla GF1. Potrà interessare gli squattrinati che vogliono cercare una buona e piccola macchina fotografica sul mercato dell’usato o convincere i maniaci dell’acquisto compulsivo a ritardare il pensionamento della propria GF1.

This week, moody skies.

All shots taken with a Nikon D7000 during last weekend’s walks in and around town with Giulia. I wanted to add “all shots were minimally processed except for that one” but the reality¹ is that I used also some dodge and burn, at least one curve adjustment and several other little tweaks. As somebody once said, no photo is truly OOC (straight out of the camera).

And about that one, well that one was the easiest one as I just applied Laroque’s snap preset for that one.

There are still pearls to be found on the internet, after all.

In these days I have found three photography blogs which are full of interesting and well written articles; stimulating, instructive, much better of the crap that Popular Photography publishes (and I’m not even mentioning the countless websites and blogs of pixel-peepers and technology feticists).

Worth bookmarking them for when you have time to sit down and read something that will help renew your passion for this art:

Rumors of an upcoming iPad Mini are abundant.

As usual, all the tech bloggers are very concerned with things such as pricing, market position, technical feasibility, etc. What a bunch of boring guys.

Now, bear with me for just a few moments, because all I want to do is tell you why I’d like an iPad Mini:

1. to read pdfs; using every now and then my wife’s iPad I realize that it is the best way to read magazines and study/annotate scientific articles. A smaller iPad would be just fine for me because otherwise I would end up just leaving it at home.
2. to collect my photos in a portfolio (which means at least 32 Gb for me).
3. to mess around with snapshots (I won’t say “edit” because I feel that real editing can only be done with a bigger computer); I have had recently so much fun playing with Snapseed and Diptic on my iPhone that I think using them on a larger display would only make things even more fun. What I’m thinking is iPhone shots, not Nikon D7000 shots, instantaneously zapped to the iPad Mini via iCloud.
4. Aperture/Lightroom library editing on the go; there are these apps (Pixelsync and Photosmith) that allow you to do what I think is the most tiresome yet essential activity in photo editing – pruning the bad apples, deciding what’s a keeper. I would like to use one of these apps while I’m watching The Wire on the couch.

So that’s all I want to do on an iPad¹. And if I could do these things on a much cheaper device (€200-250) then I would seriously consider buying one.

This week a few pictures taken during a lazy Sunday in Ziano Piacentino. Good wine there, and a first experience using an old manual focus Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 which I had modified to AI-S to use it on my D7000.

Ok, so this one was obviously not taken with the 85mm but with my Tokina 12-24 f/2.

Emphasis is mine:

Shoot from the hip and sort it out later in Photoshop; this is a slippery slope plunging inevitably towards the depths of despair and devastating loss of self-esteem that comes with shooting on program mode with a high ISO, no tripod and a reversed lens hood. The latter is the photographic equivalent of wearing socks with sandals; clearly a fate worse than death.

David Noton, “The Difference Between the Taking and the Making of a Photograph”.