Where to stand: Ansel Adams' wisdom

July 26, 2023 in journal

It's all about location, location, location!

Ansel Adams said it a long time ago: "A good photograph is knowing where to stand". Of course, there are many other things to making a good photograph, but where to place our camera is arguable one of the most important ones.

In this video, I talk about this as I share a very good example of this.

Composition after the shot

March 24, 2020 in journal

I try not to think too much about composition when I shoot: I point the camera at whatever I saw, I move around, and press the button whenever it feels right.

It's when I'm back at home that I can see more clearly if the image works or not. Although rare, there are cases where I'll find an image I had not seen in the field, an image I can still make by "re-composing" the original negative or file.

Most of my images are square, as you know. If I'm shooting digital, that means I have to crop the files to that format. While I'd rather shoot square natively, having that extra room for editing has proven to be very useful.

One example is this image of a couple of swans I took in Lago di Garda, in Northern Italy, a few months ago. It was only when I looked at it on the computer that I saw how it could work with a heavy cropping.

Another example is this image of the Badlands National Park, in South Dakota. I'd taken the original photo almost 2 years ago, but it wasn't until recently that I "saw" the panoramic image in it. It was not my intention when I took it, I wasn't thinking about a panorama, but it works.

These are extreme examples, though. Most of the time, all I do is small adjustments to the composition I did manage to capture in the field. For example, take a look at this image of a tree in the italian Alps, and compare it to the original square crop. I decided to place the tree a little bit further to the left, giving the branch a bit more room to grow to the right of the frame.

There's no shame in creating a completely new image after the shot. As I said many times, photography is not a competition, there is no prize for those who get it right the first time. Legends of photography like Ansel Adams kept playing with old negatives for decades, coming up with new edits and interpretations.

Photography is a creative process, inspiration can hit you at any point in your workflow. Embrace it.

Embrace technology that empowers you

January 10, 2020 in journal

I've alway loved technology. I've been playing with computers since I can remember, but it wasn't until the arrival of the Internet that things got serious.

I made my first website back in 1998, when I was 16. Design and technology wise, it was pretty bad. But there was something special about it: I was reaching people from all over the world.

I used to print out the analytics with the visits, I loved to see the entries showing visitors from places as far as Australia or Japan.

Today, we take this for granted, but life would be very, very different without the internet.

I am a full-time photographer thanks to technology and the internet. Had I been born in the 50s, I'd still have my day job. Photography wasn't as affordable back then either, so even if I were lucky enough to have picked up a camera, I wouldn't be shooting as much as I do today.

Today's technology gives us incredibly powerful tools to create and express ourselves, and many options to share that art. I believe this is the golden age of photography: there's a lot of noise but people are creating amazing images nowadays, much better than they used to be, and they are more accessible than ever.

We tend to romanticize the past and we forget that photographers like Ansel Adams lived on the edge of technology, using the latest cameras and film stocks, trying to perfect the medium, always experimenting with new techniques. He didn't idealize photographers or technologies from the XIX century, he strived to improve them.

As a photographer and artist, I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to live in this day and age: my 16-year-old past self would not believe what I'm able to do today from the palm of my hand from anywhere in the world.

The fact that you are reading this, from wherever you are, is proof that technology is pure magic. Embrace it and use it to your advantage.

The world needs you

July 15, 2019 in journal

I've been told many times -especially when working with film- about the right way to do things.

"Look at the masters", they say. "Do what they did", they repeat.

"It was all academic. You were taught to paint like somebody else, made me not want to paint at all. You want to paint your own way!"

Georgia O'Keeffe said it better than anyone else. Using just charcoal, she created beautiful -but radical for her time- abstract drawings. That wasn't what she was supposed to be doing. And yet, she became one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century.

Look at the masters, and then "kill" them and carve your own path. The world doesn't need another Ansel Adams or another Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The world needs you.

An Ansel Adams pilgrimage in New Mexico

May 16, 2019 in journal

I didn't have the chance to photograph New Mexico during my last road trip across the US, and that was something I wanted and needed to fix. I spent 10 days there and photographed some of the places I had seen through the eyes and work for great artists and photographers, like Ansel Adams.