Photo

Last month two bikes were stolen from a certain garage in San Donato Milanese. Those were my mountain bikes; the garage, well that wasn’t mine¹.

And it was dead easy to open the garage for these gentlemen. Not only did they steal my two most precious bikes, leaving the city bikes untouched, but also my tire pump and all of my tools like allen keys and sockets etc. These gentlemen, they were really into bikes and knew their stuff pretty well. I hope they won’t be so stupid to go ride my bikes in Finale Ligure.

These are the days when everybody talks about their new year’s resolutions. I mean everybody in the english-speaking world, I don’t think that italians do this often – but this will change (or may already have changed) because we seem to follow, like sheep, everything that americans do.

And I thought I was immune from these habits but here we go: I’m gonna make something this year, something not particularly original, something that countless other amateur photographers have done or are doing right now – a 365 project: one picture a day, on a specific theme. And the theme (as you can deduce from this post’s title) will be my daughter Valentina.

File naming has always been a bit of an obsession for me. Recently, after seeing the proliferation of too many duplicate filenames in my photography folder, I decided to solve this problem once and for all.

Something to bear in mind: using programs like iPhoto or Lightroom or Aperture (also known as DAM¹) you should not be worried about how to name your camera files, because these programs are made just for that, i.e. to manage your digital library and forget the intricancies of the filesystem. But for old maniacs who still like to feel like they’re in control of their files and not rely on the search tools offered by the new operating systems today (e.g., Spotlight), then carry on reading this because you could find something of use.

[Click here for italian version.]

This post was somehow inspired by a conversation I had on the On Taking Pictures Google+ group¹. It was something I wanted to talk about for a long time.

I have always enjoyed linking a series of photographs into something more organic. The lonely (even if beautiful) photo does not satisfy my hunger, exactly like 50g of pasta are never enough for me. The excitement for getting a single good (or even excellent) shot is just too short-lived, it just feels to me like an isolated thing with no anchors.

I went to Jordan in the middle of September 2013 for work and managed to take some photographs; this is a small selection (I have some more on flickr).

In the first section here I tried to capture the aura of the Dead Sea. I will have to go back someday and bring my family because swimming in those oily, salty, incredibly warm waters is truly an unreal and somehow magical experience.

Start here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-19208480

The story is about Usain Bolt and the snapshots he has taken using a camera borrowed from one of the sports photographers following the Olympics. But this is not about Bolt, it’s about these ‘professional photographers’ that you see in this shot.

Even if some time has passed from the last Olympics, everybody remembers the scene: Bolt runs, Bolt wins, then he goes on to perform the self-celebratory track walk, closely followed by a pack of photographers shooting full-speed their big professional Nikon and Canon rigs.

There is a thin line that connects these photographs, but I also put a couple that I just enjoyed as they were (if only to stay true to my original intention of using these posts to display photographs that do not fit into a larger story).

Things I saw in Genova while walking around with Danilo, Daniele and Paola. All shots taken with a D600 and a 70-300 f/4.5-5.6. Other photographs here.

Street photography is real big now. All photographers do street photography. Everybody talks about it. But this is really getting on my nerves. I mean, these trivial shots of everyday life covered with fine-art pretensions given by a bland conversion to black and white – it’s really unnerving.

I am looking right now at 35mm Street, which is a very good example of this trend (for other similar examples just visit the countless examples of similar stuff on various Google+ groups or other similar venues).

Experimenting with interior shots. Il Montale, Parma (Nikon D600, 50mm f/1.4 AF).

The subtitle to today’s snaps refers to a special occasion that we celebrated cooking linguine (De Cecco, 7 minutes to make them ‘al dente’) con vongole.

There is a certain kind of photograph that creates a particular atmosphere, and even though it may not be related to actual weather events, sometimes it does.

Here there are a few of these “atmospheric photographs”; they were all taken within walking distance from where I live.

San Siro, Milan-Napoli. Il calcio non mi interessa ma vedere una partita del genere tra le prime in classifica resta un’esperienza che colpisce per l’intensità del tifo e la partecipazione della gente. Per non parlare dei soggetti che si incontrano e delle occasioni fotografiche che ti ritrovi servite nel proverbiale piatto d’argento (ho fatto tutti i ritratti comodamente seduto dal mio posto con l'85mm f/1.8).

Football does not really interest me but a game between two great teams that are winning everything does really strikes you for the ferocious intensity of the supporters. Not to mention the human types that you see and the many photographic opportunities that are served on the proverbial gold platter (I shot all these people from the comfort of my seat with the 85mm f/1.8).

First things first: it’s not at all a D7000 with a large sensor inside!

If that’s the impression you have from reading the rants in the dpreview forums, well it’s wrong. And you should stop reading those forums (I know, I should too! It’s just that sometimes something really clever comes up like the Dot Tune workflow to do AF fine tuning on Nikon DSLRs).

It’s actually a bit larger, not uncomfortably so however; it’s still sized very reasonably, but it’s more squat than the D7000 probably because it needs to accomodate that wonderfully large viewfinder. The overall feel is of a tougher and more grown-up camera than the D7000 (and the D7000 in my opinion is a perfectly mature body, a perfect compromise between the small and plasticky D3xxx/D5xxx and the hulky D700/D3/D4).

But street photography is about shooting people, and if you can’t get close to them to take your photograph, then you’re just not connecting with your subjects to begin with. It’s that intimate connection that really makes a difference in street shots. As Robert Capa once said: “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

That’s what I have read recently; now, it doesn’t matter who wrote it, but this has become quite a common refrain people use when setting “rules” for street photography¹.

I want a Fuji XE-1. But I would not complain if I had an X-Pro 1. So there’s this contest where you can win an X-Pro 1 with the 35mm f/1.4, you just need to send two photographs and hope for the best.

I know that it’s totally delusional to even hope for the best but you never know.

Only two photos as I said: the first is already taken (“Yankee Cap”), so help me choosing the other one.