New Vineyard, La Berta

La Berta, a wine producer in the Emila Romagna region of Italy, asked me to come and photograph a new vineyard being planted. La Berta is one of those small, quality producers that prefer to do everything in the traditional way. So the new vines are planted meticulously by hand, one by one.

Naples

Last week I was shooting a story in Naples for a Swiss magazine. Great city, total chaos, but a lot of fun. I'll show some images once the story has been published. Meanwhile, here's a shrine to Diego Maradona found outside a bar in Spaccanapoli.

Cookbook - Tuscany

I've just come back from a week in Tuscany shooting for a book on local cuisine. The images were made at two fantastic locations, Casa Ombuto and Torre del Tartufo, which offer one-week cookery classes through Tuscookany. I was working with three chefs, Paola Baccetti, Franco Palandra and Laura Giusti, each with their own style and personality which came through in nearly 80 traditional, and not-so-traditional, Tuscan recipies.

The book will be published by Simebooks early next year.

Tech: All these images were shot with natural light but controlled with a range of diffusers and reflectors to give the shape and quality of light I wanted. I only used two lenses during the shoot, a 60mm macro and an 80mm Zork with movements to shift the plane of focus.

Fèlsina - Grape Harvest

It's been almost a year since I started photographing the Felsina vineyards in Tuscany, so I've seen it in all four seasons, and it's always a stunning location. Here's a selection from my latest visit during the grape harvest. I'll be returning in November for the olives.

Best Western Villa Pace Website

The images I shot for Villa Pace Hotel Bolognese are now up on their website.

Look@me

A couple of images from a recent campaign I shot for Look@me, a manufacturer of trendy eyewear in the north of Italy. Styling and production by Laura Pozzi. Art Direction by Pubblimarket.

Exhibition - Treviso

Thanks to everyone who came along to the opening of my chairs exhibition in Treviso. It will remain open until the end of october.

Technogym

The brochure I shot for Technogym last year has now been published. Technogym is the world leader in sports training equipment and this brochure marks their entry into providing solutions for medical practitioners.

Tech: we shot this over six days in two studios,  building the set in one studio while shooting in the other. That meant that each day started with a whole new set of challenges in terms of lighting and models. Everything was shot hand-held with a Nikon D3x and up to ten Broncolor strobes. The daylight studio created the biggest challenge as the weather, and therefore the light, was changing continuously. My trusty Quadra saved the day more than once with its speed and portability.

Laura Pozzi did a great job with the styling and Arcangelo Piai worked as my assistant throughout the shoot. Art direction and graphic design by Faberi Associati.

The Chairs Project.. contd

I've pretty much finished shooting for the chairs exhibition and I'm mounting the prints right now. The project will continue after the exhibition and I'll put a book together once I feel it's ready. Meanwhile, here are a few more shots from the series, including two I recently made at the H-Farm headquarters.

Unusual Hotels of the World

I was recently invited to become a contributor for Unusual Hotels of the World - a website where you'll find the world's most original places to sleep. I'll be blogging for them about some of the places and experiences I've come across on my travels. Should be fun.

Best Western Villa Pace Hotel Bolognese

Spent a couple of days last week shooting this hotel near Treviso that needed to update the images on their website. Thanks to Alessandro for doing a great job assisting. I'll be back to finish shooting there next month. 

Tech: I'm using a mixture of natural light and flash in these shots. The interiors are made with multiple exposures and layered in Photoshop to create the final effect. I like to try and keep things as natural as possible to maintain the atmosphere of the room, adding a touch of light when necessary to highlight a particular area. Using Elinchrom 600 watt and Quadra heads.

Montelvini

It's that time of year when wine producers are wanting new images. I've just shot a series for Montelvini, a large producer and exporter of wines based near Treviso in the north of Italy.

Progeo - More from Berlin

The Progeo brochure I shot in Berlin during the Spring has just been published. As always the company wanted a different take on wheelchair users, this time opting for an urban feel. Art direction by Delineo Design. The photographs will also be used by Potsdamer Platz for their marketing.

Tech: really simple, fast shooting in bad weather. Just hand-held and a small Nikon flash off-camera.

Fèlsina - Grapes

I had a call from Fèlsina, a quality wine producer in Tuscany, last week asking if I could come and photograph their grapes. I had to break into my holiday to go down there but it was a case of now or never.

Tech: According to the position of the sun I either used a large Lastolite  or a little flash from the Quadra to get the grapes lit nicely. It was nearly 100°F out in the vineyards so we had to work quickly.

The Chairs Project

I'm still shooting for this project which is going to be exhibited in Treviso in the middle of October. The series aims to describe a community through the chairs found in its public spaces. The exhibition is being organised by Spazio Paraggi Gallery in Treviso. Here are two shots I made yesterday.

 

Front Cover - Geo (France)

One of my images from Brittany has made the front cover of Geo magazine in France. It's always a nice feeling to see your work on a cover, especially for a magazine like Geo. The shot is of Les Aiguilles de Port Coton  on the coast of Belle-Ile. Another of those shots you have to get up painfully early for, but it was worth it in this case.

Interview - Progresso Fotografico

An interview with me together with a some of my images is featured in the current issue of Progresso Fotografico magazine here in Italy. The article focuses on the travel side of my work.

Progeo - Berlin

Here's a couple of images from a recent series I made for Progeo wheelchairs in Berlin. We spent two wet days shooting around Potsdamer Platz and the images will be used both in Progeo's new brochure and for Potsdamer Platz's marketing.

Tech: The cold and rain made this a difficult shoot. I was working in poor light but was helped by the D3s with it's amazing sensor and a couple of hand-held Nikon flash guns - strobist style.

Villa Cordevigo 2

I was back at Villa the other day to finish shooting for their new website and brochure, including this shot of their newly built pool.

Tech: There was no current in the new dining area so I had to hide a couple of 600watt Elinchroms in there pointing up to the ceiling to give a nice light. I put a Quadra out of shot to the left to illuminate the olive tree. Then it was just a question of waiting for the right moment as the twilight set in.

North Devon

I've just spent a week touring the north coast of Devon in a VW camper van. Great fun, beautiful coastline and plenty of weather, as always.

 I was shooting landscapes for 4Corners Images, my agent in London, and the collection will be available on-line next month. Meanwhile, here are a couple of shots. The first is Hartland Lighthouse with Lundy Island on the horizon and a storm arriving and yes, I got wet.

Villa Cordevigo

Villa Cordevigo is a beautifully restored 16th century property near Lake Garda that has recently opened as a 5-Star hotel. I've been shooting it for their new website and brochure along with the stylist, Laura Pozzi. I'll be back there later in June to complete the shoot.

Front Cover - Franco Mussida

Here's the cover and story page from the Fanco Mussida shoot I did a couple of months ago for Valore Alimentare.
Tech: I had about 30 minutes to make these shots during a break at the music school that Mussida runs in Milan. I wanted to get him in at least three different locations and I was working without an assistant so I had to keep things simple and fast. I used a single Quadra head with a 60cm softbox.

Valore Alimentare

In the same issue I have a series of food shots and an advertisement for the magazine itself.

iO Donna

I had a couple of pictures in iO Donna today including this double-page spread of a photograph I made a few years ago in Norway. I remember getting up horribly early to take this shot.

New Website - www.Scatola2.com

I've just launched a new website promoting my interior photography. Scatola2 is aimed at clients such as hotels, restaurants, wine producers, architects and home interior magazines looking for a contemporary approach to interiors.

Scatola2 also aims to promote collaboration between professionals working in this field, building a network of contacts from stylists and producers to video makers and hotel consultants.

www.scatola2.com

www.scatola2.it

FROM THE ARCHIVE: Vukovar

I went twice to Vukovar shooting a documentary project to mark the 10th anniversary of the war there.  A Croatian town near the border with Serbia, it suffered terribly during a three-month siege in 1991 that left 3000 dead and 15,000 homes destroyed.

It's a project, and an experience, that has stayed with me in the ten years since I shot it. I went there to offer an alternative to the drama of photojournalism. To re-visit a community that had experienced extreme crisis and to photograph it in a quiet and considered way.

The images were never published. I remember that the Independent Magazine and BBC Television, amongst others, were ready to run the series to mark the 10th anniversary, and then on September 11th 2001 some planes flew in to the Twin Towers in New York and everything changed. The Balkans were no longer news. There was new drama unfolding elsewhere. 

That, in fact, was precisely the point.

So the images stay hidden and unspeaking in sheets of negative holders, contact prints and scanned files and all the work and thought that went in to producing them remains somehow unsatisfied.

Here is one image from the series that has always intrigued me. I'm not sure if it talks of history or secrets or psychology or horror. Perhaps that is it's strength. It evokes feelings that are hard to define.

Exhibition - London

Three of my images from Venice are being shown as part of the Lost in Landscape Exhibition at The Air Gallery, London. The show is organised by 4Corners Images, the agency that represent my work in the UK.

Lost in Landscape - an exhibition of 21st Century travel photography from 30th May to 4th June at The Air Gallery, 32 Dover Street, London W1. Admission free. 10am – 7.30pm daily.

Tuscany

The nice thing about having an old car is that you can climb all over it and scratch the roof with your tripod. This is me in Tuscany yesterday shooting some new work around the Fèlsina and Farnetella vineyards. Thanks to Alessandro for taking this shot. I'll post some images from the shoot once the brochure has been published.

Fèlsina - Vinitaly

I've just finished a job for the wine producer Fèlsina in Tuscany which included a super-sized image for their stand at the Vinitaly fair in Verona this week.

Tech: this was quite a challenge because the image needed to be printed at 6 meters by 3 meters and was going to be viewed from quite close on the stand so the quality needed to be exceptional. I used a Manfrotto Panoramic head and a 60mm lens centered over it's nodal point and then made 27 exposures (three rows of nine images) to produce a file equivalent to 145 megapixels. The image was reproduced on transparent material and back-lit on the stand to produce a nice 3-dimensional quality.



And here's the actual image.

Franco Mussida

I was recently asked to make some portraits of the musician Franco Mussida, guitarist with PFM, the mythical Italian rock band from the 1970s and 80s. He now runs a music school in Milan and this is where I made the portraits. Here's one that didn't make the cut. I'll show some more once the magazine is published.

Tech: Really simple set-up here, using the Quadra again with a 60cm soft box mounted on it. That's all.

Chairs (revisited)

I'm currently working on a project for an exhibition that will be held later this year in Treviso. It's something I originally started in the UK ten years ago and I'm reshooting it now here in Italy. 

The idea is to describe a community through the chairs found in its public spaces. So I'll be visiting bars and schools and administrative buildings over the coming months to put together what should be an interesting set of images.

I'm following a particular strategy with these photographs, shooting the chairs against a flat-walled background. The background is actually as important as the chair itself, the two together providing enough clues to establish the setting - but not always. I'm happy to leave an element of doubt.

Tech: I'll be making large prints from these images so I need big files. I'm shooting on a Nikon D7000 with a 24mm PC-E lens (with movements) and a Jumbo MBS head. This allows me to keep the lens fixed in position while I shift the camera body vertically to make three exposures. These are then stitched together to create the final image.

Trees (continued)

Here another image from the trees series I was shooting in the winter. Now the season 's changing I should be out to shoot some more on this soon.

Tech: In this series I'm trying to make the image itself, the two-dimensional 'thing' that the image is, a protagonist in the work on equal footing with the subject. To say 'this is not a tree, this is a photograph of a tree'. Using layers and textures to build up a kind of surface that gives the image a tangible quality.