Tag: personal note

An abrupt start for 2022

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This life frame is crazy. 2022 started abruptly. Just about everything has been turned upside down. The last 4 weeks have been a rainfall of positive & negative events falling one after the other, in a rapid succession. 

On January 4th when my 90 years old granny suddenly passed away for a massive heart attack. I flew back to Italy on January 7th but just missed her funeral by a few hours. I had already booked my tickets for those dates in early December, when we were unaware of everything. Was it destiny? I don’t think so. I have spent most of the time with my family, and catching up with a few friends. It was heart-warming and sad at the same time. Dad’s health is now giving us cause for serious concern.

I got the chance to pose as a model for a talented friend (a photographer who I consider to be a sort of an “Edgar Allan Poe of the camera”) Stefano Cavazzini. With my immense pleasure, he has already forwarded some early shots to me and I am in love with them! The day after I caught acute bronchitis and, because of that, I had to cancel my flight back to the UK. That is the first time in my life I have had to cancel a flight because of sickness.

In the meantime, a couple of my recent pics were published in PhotoVogue (this is always good for my self-esteem and provides a great and remarkable encouragement to keep on with my photography)!

I have felt lonely, worried, angry, uplifted, hopeful, rational & irrational, passive & pro-active, lost and so much loved. Things are changing quickly, this is a fact, and whilst one side of me looks forward to this, the other part is scared. As somebody told me a long time ago: “Only from time of crisis we can expect good things to come out”.

About portraits & the connection line between model & photographer

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To pose, or not to pose? That is the question. To this hamletic doubt, my opinion is that it is better to pose and, when in front of the camera, you need to know how to pose. A portrait photo session can be a pleasant treat that we can give ourselves and it can produce rewarding shots, but from my experience, this can be comparable to living a trauma. It may not be so easy or it may not come so natural to feel comfortable in front of the camera. This can be even harder if the session is taken in a studio : usually the room is not big, you are put under the lights and around you everything is dark…all this can be really intimidating.

As I have recently read on the web, posing is marketing. I agree with that. The way you pose, how you look into the camera, how you are dressed, your make-up and gestures : all those factors are transfered, viewers are registering and codifying them. You are sharing a message about yourself and who you are.

If you have a public profile on social media or just if you want people to know you, you need to present yourself visually, this becomes your signature, it is like a business card. You are how you show yourself and how you choose to appear.

To see the procedure from the photographer’s perspective, there are two possible scenarios : 1) taking spontaneous pictures ; 2) taking “posed” shots. It all depends on what your models or customers are asking, what kind of images they are looking for.

I frequently receive most requests from the first category. People prefer to be taken in a spontaneous, non-intrusive way, usually outdoors or in familiar surroundings where they feel more secure and relaxed. However if I could choose, the second category is my favorite. I love working in the studio because I have so much to learn while at the same time most things are under my control, such as the lighting, the setting, the posture, the expressions and the concept. It is usually up to the photographer to direct the subject(s) but prior to that, you might need to establish a connection with the model(s), otherwise it is unlikely to work. The “human touch” is key as well as communication.

The pictures I have added to this article were taken in Parma, back in 2015. It was the first time that Massimo came to the studio. He is shy. The most difficult piece of the journey is the start of any shoot and Massimo was feeling awkward. However after a short settling-in period (inclusive of a chat and a few jokes), he switched, and actually began to enjoy the whole experience and he became the protagonist.

I cherish these photos because I find them elegant and classy and he looks really good. I didn’t expect him to take the stage in the role of an actor! The results were unexpected & rewarding for both of us.

To where is our visual intelligence moving?

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One of the questions I asked myself, when I first started photography, was : “Why do some pictures easily capture our attention and stay in our mind while others are just labelled as banal and dull?”.

I realised that a photo is a relationship between the subject(s) and the surrounding space. The unicity of an image, apart from what can be its meaning or the sentimental value carried in it, is based on the spatial disposition of the subject(s) and how they appear in space. Maybe even more than the “What” is important the “How”.

I never liked maths as a subject at school. It has always been ditchwater for me. As my mother would say with regret, I am a “literate spirit”, without doubt. I knew that in photography the setting of the subject(s) is a vital element because our attention needs to be brought to a specific point. So when I started taking pictures, I feared that a lack of “geometrical sense” might be a handicap or a devalue when it comes about to prepare a shot and to take a portrait, for instance. But I eventually understood that I had confused “numerical” with “geometrical” and the two things are not the same.

In photography as well as in other fields, I consider myself a traditionalist but on the other hand I am not scared to experiment and I don’t dislike the lopsided, the wonky, the asymmetrical and the unbalanced.

The key is that our eyesight is selective in the way it sees what is around us and photography has rules that are quite clear about symmetry and geometry in a composition (for instance the rule of thirds, the positioning of the subject, the use & choice of light) and you can get yourself into trouble when you break the rules or take “extreme” shots. You can have fun and achieve success taking unbalanced shots but you will raise lots of criticism and somehow the eyes may not agree on the final results. Our visual pleasure needs to be satisfied by what is perceived as a positive equilibrium of the elements.

It shall also be added that we constantly live under rules of fashion that are changing. Talking specifically about portraits, I remember about 10-15 years ago, there was this tendency to cut the lines in a picture obliquely, to give a different shape to the subject, to look for a new perspective. At that time this looked so innovative and energetic. Now this trend is almost over. We are trying now new dirtections.

Having an original approach to the form to be given to the image is appreciable but, at the end of the day, our eyes are looking for a “peace of the senses” when we look at something. There are rules that need to be respected, a logical sense and discipline, in order to avoid to be kicked out of the game.

To finish this article, I am attaching below a beautiful, classic and symmetrical picture of one of my favorite photographers, Horst Horst (1906-1999), as well as some snap shots I took randomly with my mobile a few days ago in Edinburgh…