Shooting with Rossella was amazing. It was her first time in front of the camera and she told me she didn’t sleep the night before the shooting because she was too nervous.
It’s hard to describe how intense it was watching her working her ass off to let me have the photo I was looking for.
so many more after the cut
So! Among the creative ways to raise money for our plan to move to California, I decided to put a one-on-one 8 hours workshop up for auction.
It’s all in italian (but google translation is always a funny way to fix that), since I guessed most people actually willing to come to my studio or get me to their place will be from around here, but since a lot of people I know still read livejournal but know nothing about my other blog, I’d thought I’d shamelessly link it here.
And if you know someone who might be interested, link them to the auction page! Most of all if it’s that rich grandad of yours living in Maldive who has just bought a new camera and really want to learn how to use it!
Another one of those theme of the week weird things? I make one each week, get used to it.
This week was crazy. It’s like technology was revolting against me. Everything I touched, broke. Its been frustrating and now I’m behind with a lot of things, but I managed not to freak out completely and this makes me quite proud of myself.
The world didn’t end. I am loved.
I don’t really need much more.
My aunt Liliana gave me a couple of cameras she had that were gathering dust at home. This is a Bencini Comet III. It is fixed at 1/50 f11 and works with 127 mm film.
A lot of pictures on my family album were taken with this camera, built in 1953. I just need to find some rolls of film and start making her feel useful again!
This week I had a little more time to work on my "theme of the week" photo. And I wanted to experiment more with depth and mixing the bidimensional feeling with the third dimension.
the theme for week 7 was "shadow". I shot with Wayang Kulit in mind and then took a different direction.
I had to finish it all in a very short time because I had to leave for Milan and cut two fingers in the process (dumbdumbdumb)
find out about the process after the cut
I like the kind of relationship I get to build with my models. We go out to catch up and drink hot chocolate, they send me super nice e-mails when they think of me and sometimes they come up with ideas for fun shootings.
So when Elena emailed me this cellphone picture she took while she was hiking I thought it could be a fun location to shoot in.
She needed some cheering up because she’s had a though summer and she’s just undergone surgery and there’s nothing like an afternoon of fooling around to do that.
We only had about an hour of light though, so after that we went to my studio and again she had ideas and pictures as reference and props and accessories and cool clothes. I just love it when models do their homework and have an amazing sense of style!
I am neglecting this place more than I’d like to. It’s just that between all the stuff that needs to be done before we move to L.A., my italian Internet life, work and trying (but miserably failing) to spend some quality time with my loved ones, I just don’t have enough hours in each day.
Last week’s theme was "connection" and this is the picture:
this week’s theme was "crown".
I’m not happy with the result, but I’m happy I actually managed to complete it even though I really hadn’t time to do it properly. But since this theme of the week thing is mostly about DOING something each week no matter what, I guess I can’t complain too much
Also: I totally forgot to blog about this!
From now on and until april, the PRINT SALE is on. Write me linking to the picture(s) you want me to print (20x30cm) and I’ll do it, every month on the 15th. Each print costs 30 euros. Handling and shipping in Italy is 7 euros. Write me for shipping costs for other countries.
Yesterday we shot the first of the 2 wedding I accepted to shoot this year (the second one is going to be next week).
Nothing against shooting weddings, au contraire. It’s just that I’m a bit difficult when it comes to accepting this kind of jobs, because I need to make sure that the couple understands that I’m not a wedding photographer and that they really get what this means. And I want to make sure that they have spoken to a couple of wedding photographers before asking me.
And then I need to make sure that I sincerely care about them, because shooting wedding it’s so very different from shooting something just because you are paid to do so.
You become part of something intimate and precious and I really do believe in marriage. Which directly leads to why most of the time I just refuse.
And to add to this, it’s a LOT of work and I’m still as anal retentive when I shoot 1000 pictures as I am when I shoot 10 pictures.
This, to say that my legs, shoulders and back are KILLING me today.
But I managed to shoot this week’s theme just the same, because I’m stubborn and quitting after 3 weekes would be too lame to bear.
This week’s theme was "secret".
Every detail I decided to incorporate has a specific meaning but… I won’t tell you!
and this was the first photo, but I wasn’t completely happy with is, so I reshot it.
As you are probably noticing, I’m trying to keep a consistent style for my theme of the week photo.
I think my influence is part mcKean, part Mimmo Jodice, part scrapbooking/mixedmedia/foundartthingie
I am obsessed with ripping, cardboard, yard/twine/thread, dead animals
Over the year I have explored many different styles of photography, trying to experiment with different lighting, different post processing, colors, black and white, etc. I am all over the place. Up until now my answer to this has been: I don’t know what my style is, I need to explore.
But I noticed that this kind of imagery have been popping out every once a while in my work and I feel it very "me". I thought it was about time to start going a little deeper. This is only the 3rd week and I’m just probing the waters and still keeping the work on the safe side, I realize.
But I hope it will get more interesting and experimental (and personal) as the weeks go by.
Also, lately I’ve been starting to question and rethink my photography very deeply. I need to understand what I want to be when I grow up, at some point.
During the last couple of years I have been shooting a lot of commercial work and I’m not sure that’s who I am, deep down inside.
I mean, I love working with models and beautiful girls, but as I think about my work in retrospective, I think I’m more of a people photographer.
I actually love working with "real" people, I like building a relationship with them, I love letting them see themselves through my eyes. And I love building weird images in which they become characters of a story.
Even when I shoot models, I care more about them than I care about the clothes.
This feeling has been with me in the last few days like a little spark of electricity under my skin. I don’t know what I’ll do about it, yet. All I know is that I’m feeling excited about finding out.
So, just heard from the lawyer who’s going to follow my Visa application and apparently even though the O-1 visa is often referred to as "freelance visa" it is not and I’ll need a sponsor.
And apparently I can be paid by my sponsor only, even if it is confirmed with the USCIS that I may have an arrangement with my sponsor that I can accept payment from third parties.
Even though sponsoring a O1 visa just means they enable me to stay in the US and it is in no way an employment contract nor it would cost a potential sponsor anything and even if they would not be responsible for me while I’m there, I cannot see why a random agency would sponsor me. The fact the I cannot see it doesn’t mean I cannot make it happen, though.
So next step is: find myself a pimp sponsor.
Today I took the first step towards an O-1 visa.
If everything goes as planned, we manage to sell almost all our possessions and we are lucky, in late spring 2011 we will be in California (for a year, to start with, but my visa would grant me 3 years).
So, in the next months, expect weird questions, a lot of stress (I don’t know if I’ll get the visa yet and I’m already stressed over house and car) and random desperation.
Anyone from Los Angeles reading this… you have some times to change state before we come.
The theme of the week thing goes on. This week’s theme was "double". WIP photos behind the cut
Barbara with poppy seeds.
I think it’s amazing how much trust she has in me. She just does what I ask her, and then some more. I am truly blessed to have her in my life.
and some
so. Since I really suck with film and I didn’t know if any of the previous pictures would come out, I used digital ad a backup and mostly to preview light.
And I thought I might as well post a couple of those.
No photoshop because I’m getting really lazy.
I have this "theme of the week" thing going on and this week’s theme was "pain"
Tri-X 400 + some ruining here and there
I decided I might as well start to learn to use some decent video editing software and since I have Premiere I would try to use that *at some point*
Then yesterday I was supergrumpy, had a terrible, terrible headache and my eyes were killing me (I have Dry Eye Syndrome it’s been worsening fast and my eye doctor won’t see me sooner than 2 weeks).
I came across a little piece of music that I thought was really interesting and I shot little pieces of video for about a quarter of an hour, just to experiment with. I decided to use a lensbaby because I didn’t want to bother too much about the technical quality of the video: I wanted to make something a little weird and moody that I could quickly stitch together.
"Quickly" became about 2 hours, but I can see why people don’t actually use iMovie to edit
Little Experiment from bruko on Vimeo.
