Obviously I remember quite clearly this photo and the entire NYT photo essay on Cuba . I remember it because it also came up on TOP along with a pretty much sterile discussion about how truthful or not were the color rendition in these photographs:

Last year I went to Cuba with my wife and my daughter. Before the trip I was overwhelmed with the weight of Cuba and its iconic tropes (the cars, the beautiful people, the cigars); after the trip I became annoyed with the whole thing however, realizing that the photographic essence of Cuba is as fake as the oversaturated, foamy waters landscapes that pollute the passionate photographer visual experience these days.

One little example: you know those american cars that nobody fails to mention each time you talk about Cuba? Turns out most of them they're empty shells, the original V8 engines gone and replaced by cheap, reliable and easy to service Toyota 4-cylinder diesels. Overlooking this detail is a criminal act in my view. Photographing them like they were real american muscle cars from the 50s and not tourist traps is to betray the honesty of your photographs.

I think that camera reviews should be written either within 3 months from initial purchase or after a much longer time, like 5 years maybe. After a few weeks of use, any average photographer would know by heart button locations, quickly change the camera settings, know what's the highest ISO and the minimum usable shutter speeds, how the autofocus works and so on. And obviously shot a few hundreds photographs in different locations and situations.

After this initial period, he is either using the camera (and enjoying it) or decided to look elsewhere. And if he continues to use that camera, he starts to find loopholes, alternative ways to go around certain defects, until he no longer remembers what was the problem in the first place -- and the longer way to accomplish a task becomes the norm.

October 2016, I finally get the chance to ride my Nicolai Mojo in a proper setting. And what a test it has been!

I have been riding for seven days straight on some wonderful trails mostly around the Huesca province in Spain, south of the Pyrenees. That means mostly Ainsa, for the more knowledgeable bikers, that may remember the 2015 Enduro World Series race.

And yes I should mention the geological significance of Ainsa too. In fact, I have been in this part of the world years ago -- around 2006 if memory serves well -- but honestly the emotions you get from riding on these rocks are way above those you get from studying them.

The long Norwegian September is a period of the year when I'm still very much in holiday-mode, with my skin still burning from the southern italian sunshine, and at the same time dreading the dark winter ahead. It is a period when my congenital hatred for office life and rituals reach the highest peak; it is a period where all these first-world problems are channeled into the research of a new camera to play with¹.

My trusted (and hypothetical) readers know that I have a subdued (and long-standing) attraction for Leicas. Prices and other factors have so far kept me from going that crazy route; perhaps one of these factors is Fuji, a historical brand that, a few years ago, pulled out of the blue a series of cameras and tools that rival Leica in terms of pure appeal (and probably destroys it if we consider the price/performance ratio). This is why I bought a second-hand Fuji X-Pro1 with a 35mm f/2 lens (smaller and faster than the iconic 35/1.4). All for the outrageous price of six-hundred euros. Compare to the cost of a brand new X-Pro2 or XT-1 before commenting on the stupidity of buying a 4-years old camera.

[Click here for italian version.]

I have kept this yellow notepad for I don't know how long.

It serves the basic purpose of taking notes but it's tough and water resistant too. Real geologists use this kind of notepad when they're out in the field to record events, log rocks, sketch outcrops, maybe draw funny faces too.

I am not a real geologist but I have had the opportunity from time to time to visit interesting places. I thought this notebook would be ideal to collect what I call my geolandscapes.

[Click here for english version.]

Ho conservato questo quadernino giallo per non so quanto tempo. E' il classico quadernino da geologo di campagna, con pagine robuste e resistenti all'acqua.

I veri geologi lo usano per registrare note e campioni di roccia, disegnare affioramenti, e magari anche abbozzare un fumetto di tanto in tanto.

Io non sono un vero geologo ma mi e' capitato di visitare luoghi interessanti; ho pensato che questo quadernino fosse quanto mai adatto per raccogliere i miei geopaesaggi.

How can you capture the wind on a photograph? How can you make the viewer feel the cold or the warmth of a place? How can you make landscape photography communicate the sense of a place? Can a photo be a substitute for the simple, raw emotions that one feels when he's out in the woods or in the mountains?

These are the things that lately have been on my mind. I'm pretty sure it all started with something that Andrew Molitor wrote on his brilliant blog. He keeps bashing on these points but right now I will not search those two or three relevant posts but here's the gist of it (or more correctly, my interpretation):

Wedding photography is something like newborn photography; cheesy, kitsch and very very false. Obviously I'm talking about the kind of wedding and newborn photography which is most in vogue nowadays (i.e., the first hits you get when googling these keywords).

I just happened to read Milnor's blog that featured an interview with some wedding photographer I didn't know -- and i still don't know -- but what was interesting was the little background story Milnor wrote so I thought about something:

Forget what I said in previous posts. I may still have some sympathies for Laroque and Simpson and Johnston but I have reached a place where there are no more photographic heroes for me on the web.

Unless you count Andrew Molitor, of course¹.

There are so many wonderful ideas on his blog, and once you start reading you realize what's missing from the internet these days; the excitement that I still remember from the days when the web was young, when you could discover brilliance without the taint of money-making.

Yesterday I started to write a little background story to introduce a post on how I use Python and how fun and creative that is. However, the "little background story" started to grow and became something else entirely, so I decided to cut off the science part and leave it …

Since I picked up Python a couple of years ago I have enjoyed my everyday job more and more. It's like being thrown back to my 12-year old self playing with a ZX Spectrum or Commodore-128, when all I wanted was to create videogames or do some other stuff¹; only back then I didn't have the perseverance and the excuses that I have now.

"Excuses" is a fine word for what I do; I am assigned a task (or sometimes I go looking for one), and I see this task only as an excuse to solve the problem in a way that I see fit. So if there's even a hint of repetition I will go and write a for-loop to do that. If I need to use a dumb-ass software that I don't like I will write the dumb-ass piece of code myself². Etc.

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.