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.

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.

I have had this Nikon FM2 lying around in my house for some time now. It has not seen much action though.

You see, I started taking photos when I was sixteen or seventeen with a Yashica FX3, and I don't really have any kind of nostalgia for those times when I had to wait days before realizing I missed a certain shot, or that I focused on that insignificant detail behind my subject.

But this Nikon is a lovely piece of metal, so I said to myself, let's put some film in and give it a go. After a few half-assed attempts using expired film, I loaded a roll of Fuji Acros 100 back in September 2014, shot with it on a couple of occasions, and a couple of weeks ago I finally got it developed.

The only type of competition I have ever enjoyed is two-wheeled racing; I have raced motorbikes and mountain bikes in the past (and I will probably continue to do so once this daddy thing wears off).

In this sort of competition there is no subjectivity; if you go faster than …

C'era una bimba che saltava sul letto ieri.

Parco della Villa Reale di Monza, ottobre 2014.

Queste bimbe di due anni corrono sempre:

A maggio scorso ho assistito a una presentazione di Francesco Cito, noto fotografo italiano. Tra i vari progetti mostrati c'era anche "Coma", in cui raccontava, attraverso immagini piatte e struggenti, la normalità che circonda dei ragazzi entrati in coma irreversibile.

E la normalità sarebbe quella di parenti e amici che …

Months ago I asked the OTP community about their online reading habits. I mentioned my favourite blogs and briefly discussed my main concern which is: is online reading just a filler, sort of reading your twitter feed when you're bored¹?

Anyway, my idea is that yes, books give you …

This is the second part of my selection of photographs from Eastern Turkey.

The first part features cityscapes and city dwellers and people in general.

This second part is all about landscapes and geology which hopefully would interest even those of you who are not into geology. After all, geology has at its core a certain fascination with the natural beauty you find in nature -- but sometimes those who work in the field seem to neglect this simple fact and then geology can become truly boring.