I wanted to get a Leica this time. For real.

You know Leica: stupidly expensive cameras that are more likely to be kept in a closet or worn like a piece of jewellery than actually used (it wasn’t like that before, when actual journalists back in the fifties used it as a fast, robust little camera to be used in the field).

Anyway, even if now they seem to be more of a fashion statement, I have always liked the impression of solidity, their simplicity, and that funky way of setting the focus¹. But I would have never considered one for real if I had not played with the original Monochrom; that really changed something, the simple pleasure of using and holding this rather large, deceiptively simple and “dense” camera changed somehow my perception of Leicas. I will be honest and declare it right now that none of this matters when it comes to photography; but I’m talking about something else here, I’m talking about very elementary pleasures that are tangentially related to the actual making of photographs; the same pleasure that I get from using bycicles or a Faber-Castell pencil for example.

Warning: this is serious nerdy stuff. Not for the faint of heart. Carry on reading if:

• you know what Python is
• you have a blog, but not the easy kind like Tumblr or Blogger, something that allows you to write in HTML (or Markdown), e.g. Pelican or Jekyll
• you have a Flickr account and want to post links to photos or albums in said blog

What these two scripts do is simply to print out to console a nicely formatted <figure> tag with the static URL of a 1600 px (long side) version of your original photo and a caption with all the common shoot data (aperture, shutter speed, etc, like you used to have in the old times before artists got fancy and began shooting with iPhones; I know I used to record on a little paper notebook these data long before Exif was born). If that’s not available (for older photos I know flickr did not create such versions) the script will fall back to a standard “Large” size (1024 px long side).

Since I last wrote about (stolen) bikes my friend Phil (from T-P 2010) convinced me to get a bike which I would have never thought of buying; a short-travel, full-suspension Norco with 29" wheels. The price was very reasonable too, which I think was essential for my decision.

I have had this Norco since March 2014, and rode it everywhere; from banal cross-country loops to gnarly rocky trails in Finale Ligure (my preferred training playground). It was a blast, and since then I have had only positive thoughts for big wheelers. After a while, I began pushing the bike to its limits and I was considering to upgrade fork and shock but it sounded like one of those stupid upgrades where I had to spend more than what the bike was worth to have truly significant changes.

Well it seems I have successfully ported my blog to Pelican. After hacking my way through jekyll to make the site look like I wanted it to look, I had the irresistible urge to try out Pelican.

And I liked it so much it seemed logical to spend a few more sleepless nights to make it work. Honestly though, that was easier than Jekyll; not sure this is due to the familiarity I have with Python, but it’s probably more to do with approaching the whole thing more organically, without switching this on and that off and see what’s the results.

Yes I know, the last post before this one is dated March 2015.

But stuff happened, and I will write another time about our recent move to Norway. This is just a brief post to mark the day that I have finally uploaded to github the latest iteration of my Jekyll blog.

If you fancy a bit of history, in 2012 I moved my blog to github & jekyll, then in 2013 I made some radical changes to the layout.

I have had this Nikon FM2 lying around in my house for some time now. It has not seen much action though.

You see, I started taking photos when I was sixteen or seventeen with a Yashica FX3, and I don’t really have any kind of nostalgia for those times when I had to wait days before realizing I missed a certain shot, or that I focused on that insignificant detail behind my subject.

The only type of competition I have ever enjoyed is two-wheeled racing; I have raced motorbikes and mountain bikes in the past (and I will probably continue to do so once this daddy thing wears off).

In this sort of competition there is no subjectivity; if you go faster than everybody else, you finish first. If you are slow, if you make mistakes, you finish last¹. I have always been a middle-pack kind of guy. But I still enjoyed racing even after finishing behind elders and youngsters, males or females – if somebody is faster than me that is pretty darn objective and I respect that.

C’era una bimba che saltava sul letto ieri.

Parco della Villa Reale di Monza, ottobre 2014.

Queste bimbe di due anni corrono sempre:

Fino a sfinirsi:

Diciamolo, Sara è uno spasso:

A maggio scorso ho assistito a una presentazione di Francesco Cito, noto fotografo italiano. Tra i vari progetti mostrati c’era anche “Coma”, in cui raccontava, attraverso immagini piatte e struggenti, la normalità che circonda dei ragazzi entrati in coma irreversibile.

E la normalità sarebbe quella di parenti e amici che festeggiano i compleanni, cambiano e puliscono i loro ragazzoni trentenni regrediti a un livello pre-infantile.

L’interpretazione di Cito sarebbe che: le mamme, loro sono anche contente di pulire i pannolini e cambiare i loro ragazzoni, perché è come un riavvicinarsi a quei momenti felici dell’infanzia in cui il bambino ha un bisogno morboso di loro. I papà invece si allontanano; e il motivo per cui lo fanno è che i papà (tutti quanti eh, nessuno escluso) riversano sui figli idee e aspirazioni mancate e quindi vedono i figli come proseguimento della loro esistenza o realizzatori di sogni mancati. E quando il figlio diventa un vegetale allora se ne disinteressano, e si allontanano.

Months ago I asked the OTP community about their online reading habits. I mentioned my favourite blogs and briefly discussed my main concern which is: is online reading just a filler, sort of reading your twitter feed when you’re bored¹?

Anyway, my idea is that yes, books give you something else, something that takes you away for longer times, requiring a committment to the act of reading and comprehension that is essential if you really want to go deep into a subject.

This is the second part of my selection of photographs from Eastern Turkey.

The first part features cityscapes and city dwellers and people in general.

This second part is all about landscapes and geology which hopefully would interest even those of you who are not into geology. After all, geology has at its core a certain fascination with the natural beauty you find in nature – but sometimes those who work in the field seem to neglect this simple fact and then geology can become truly boring.

Last May I went to Eastern Turkey to see some geology. I also had the opportunity to hit the streets of cities that were unknown to me.

I have collected my favourite photographs in two separate posts¹. This is part 1, featuring street portraits, cityscapes and other stuff I liked while walking on the streets of Adana, Kahramanmaras and Elazig.

Part 2 is all about landscapes and geology which hopefully would interest even those of you who are not into geology.

A brief interlude to note down a couple of things.

I follow only one podcast, and that’s On Taking Pictures. As the name says, it’s about photography, and in one recent Q&A episode they kindly answered a question I have made; what’s cool however is their comment on my name which I’d like to remember for the future – skip to the 1h18'28" mark:

The second thing is about Flickr: they have recently published a collection of baobab’s photographs and have included one of my photos from my Madagascar honeymoon trip¹.

Recentemente mi sono imbattuto in due cose meravigliose. La prima, una serie di foto scattate in Pakistan da un giovane, pluripremiato, fotografo, Muhammed Muheisen.

La seconda, un piccolo saggio di Marina Keegan, pieno di speranza, gioia di vivere e quel senso di fratellanza e comunità che si ha solo a vent’anni.

Entrambe le cose hanno un risvolto tragico, scontato nel caso delle fotografie di Muhammed, visto che ci si immagina la probabile fine che potranno fare i ragazzini da lui ritratti, meno scontato ma ugualmente raggelante nel secondo – Marina infatti è poi morta in un incidente stradale cinque giorni dopo il suo graduation day, conferendo una certa potenza a queste sue ultime parole.