The end of a year

It's just 7.00 a.m. of a day that will last more than usual and I'm sitting alone in my apartment kitchen, as my kids and wife are still quietly sleeping in bed. Out of the window there's a hint of day that will be. A cold wind has gently blown all night long. The air is surprisingly clear. It's one of those dawns that invite you to pick the camera and shoot some pics of your hometown skyline. I've done it so many time that I think I'll save myself from freezing, today.

I've sorted out my private e-mail. There's so much to be done in the coming year. I've committed myself to one of the greatest project ever organized by 591. There will be a four-folded exhibition that will take inspiration from the ancient belief that everything was made up from a mix of four elements only. I'll take care of the "Earth" section. I've generated a new mailbox. Now it's time to think about a presentation and a poster picture to go by throughout the exhibition run.

Thinking back to the exhibition advertisement and the network of personal contacts to refresh, I just realised I forgot to renew my subscription to a couple of websites where I used to upload my images. I'm doubtful, I don't know if I still need them. I haven't posted anymore lately: I was bored of receiveing cut&paste appreciations from people swallowing images all the time. 591 has grown so much, lately, that there's enough to fill all my "free hours". For the coming year I think I'll focus on this.

And ... as there are chances that the new year will bring news for my profession, I need to get ready and off-loaded!
:-)

Night Photography

Colors & Water

As 591 opened a call for a new collective exhibition about "night photography", I went looking into my hard-disk for some good ol' pictures to send. Without going too far in time, I came accross these (surprisingly) color pictures that I took in Stockholm and Goteborg a couple of years ago. Just after loading them together into the blog editing page where I'm currently writing in, I realized that they all have two great elements in common: colors & water.

I must admit that keeping faithful to Black & White is sometime very hard. These pictures are the clear evidence. When sunlight is missing and we rely of artificial lights (unless we're walking close to an erupting vulcan, a big fire burning or under the sky vault brightened by an aurora borealis), colors come to our aid to better yield the sense of depth and the slightly perceptible variations of water in the air. Water, on the other hand, creates that magical framework of reflections that puzzles our minds and keep us a little bit more on the picture.

Fall - II

Some more samples ...

Fall

Samples from the season of transitions.

Winter Pics

I'm always late with my schedule, but I seldomly give up an idea. I've just finished the schematics for a paper airplane that I started two years ago for my son. Now it's time to start a doll house for his sister. In the same way, I'm sorting out pictures that I took six months ago in Norway, during the latest Winter Olympic Games. I wonder if I'll be posting summertime photographs between Christmass and Easter. :-)

  

Shades of Brännö

Forgotten arms

The long Summer season we have had this year is about to pass the rudder control to the incoming Autumn. The air is still warm and inviting to walk outside or riding on a bike, here in Milan and there are no evident signs of change. Yet, days are becoming to shorter and shorter and subtle need for lethargy is spreading among us. I'm welcoming Saturday afternoons spent at home, kneading for a pizza or an apple-pie. I have to buy up time with my kids and wife. I can't say where I'm going to spend my next weeks and months. For sure in a distant place, much colder that here. This inevitably takes me back to the last winter season spent up there, in Scandinavia.

I took this picture in Oslo, last winter, walking along the harbour banks of the most expensive districts in all Europe. Someone had thrown these gloves out on the thick layer of ice grown in the water alleys of Aker Brygge. I fancied someone had fallen under before the ice hurdened and was no longer in need for his gloves. Funny.

Landscapes

Landscape photography is something that everyone, at least once in his life, has experienced. I always find very difficult to resist from taking the gears out of my backpack and snap a picture when mother nature offers its best to our eyes.
Apparently this video has very little to do with photography. Yet, the most experienced will soon recognize that this breathtaking clip is actually made of several still pictures taken from a standard (high-end) camera, mounted on a dolly with a remote controlled step motor that enables it to move the minimum that is necessary to make the resulting picture feel as if it was three dimensional. It's something worth being watched full screen and listened with an hi-fy audio system. Enjoy!

Quarter Frame Camera

Sitting at the window of an old pastry shop (Ahlströms Konditori) in Goteborg downtown with my friend Janus, just arrived from far Greenland. People outside come and go. Some stop and look inside the shop. I lift my tea spoon and make a sign of salutation. My slice of pie is finished: it's time to go.

Ready for launch

Goteborg, the Big Wheel on the Opera House square is the only "mobile" thing in town able to stand still under the strong winds of these days. Autumn is already here. The tail of a hurricane, born thousands of kilometers away, is crossing Scandinavia and I couldn't find a better moment for dropping my bones here.

The invisible watchmaker

Now that the echoes of the recent tragedy happened in Oslo downtown and Utoya Island, in Norway, are starting to fade and everything seems to be going back to normality, my thoughts go back to some days before those events, when I was there for my last time.

I fear there won't be any other chance to travel to Oslo in the coming years. The R&D centre I used to go is now closed and people working there have flown away, disappeared, pursuing their dreams to build a new better promising future. I can only leaf through my photo galleries and try to remember.

When I'm abroad I use to take a walk a lot, soon after dinner. I use those hours to be really alone with myself, to get intimate with some aspects of the town where I am that I never would be able to discover while rushing to office in the early hours of the morning and, needless to say, to take light-life pictures.

One block behind the square where the National Theater stands, not far from the City Hall towers and the turists' docks of Akerbrigge, if you walk past the windows of a "sexual gadget" shop, on the window of a small shop a sticker says: "Urmakermester".

I've seen this man working night time for year, but I never succeeded to stop by his window till the very last time I was in Oslo.

New ways of blogging

This is a trial post made from my office Outlook GUI. It could be an option not to miss too much time logging into Blogger, editing and sending my posts out to the world. Obviously this also comes handy for those who have a smart-phone with enough capability to snap a picture and a send it via e-mail.

I will also try to insert a picture I took during a visit to Goteborg's Hasselblad Foundation, two years ago.

Uhm ... the results are not so exciting. What you see above is just the restructured version of what I found once posted my e-mail. I forgot that the background is dark and that there's a limited set of fonts available. These can be easily fixed next time I post via e-mail. Yet, I fear that the image formatting will be tricky to solve.

I have to work upon that but it's good to know that it works.

Eternally connected

Looks like we have no more chances to find ourselves alone. Anytime, anywhere, anyway eternally on-line. Our minds are no longer able to disconnect from the continuous flow of data that crosses thru them and goes by, as silently as it came in. Minutes flow and soon it's time to stand up and queue: boarding begins.

Slow Hand is in town

Oslo, Frogner Stadion:
Eric Clapton has just finished to play his last hit, when some people start walking swiftly away from the mass that still lingers, crams and cries afoot the stage, wishing the old guitarist put his nose out again. I've got my couple of hours of music, standing with feet into a sticky mud, under heavy rainfall. I'm devastated. I'll throw away my jeans in a bin as soon as I'll reach my hotel room. I'll have to get back home tomorrow, before I do the same to my shoes. My watch says it's nearly eleven in the evening. Northern summer magic. I have to hurry: I could miss the last train to Asker.

One third missing ...

Two examples of imperfection

After all, rules have always been made for someone to break them.

Neither fish nor flesh ...

"Well," said Rabbit, after a long silence in which nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having, "we'd better get on, I suppose. Which way shall we try?"


Sometimes I feel like Rabbit, one of Winnie the Pooh's best friends, in this excerpt. I walk on a path for long time, wishing someone is after me but, then, in a moment of disguise and distraction, I realize that no one is either at my side, nor on my tracks. Neither I dare to say that I wish someone could be waiting for me at the end of the trail. Still, I never give up, as I feel a constant need to find a way to get on ... and dream.
Something like this is happening again in these days of early June: I'm really drowning under a heap of work to do, whereas the heap of things that I'd love to do grows on and on ... They simply heap. I put down notes to stick somewhere and let them get yellow and dusty, day after day, month after month ... year after year.

I haven't been grown and educated in order to be able to manage my time as I should instead, for coping with all the different things I'd like to carry on. The result is this strange kind of feeling of being potentially able to do everything but, when it comes to facts, I throw constantly aside all my passions and projects and bow down my head to work.

I'm in Oslo this week. There are good chances this could be my last week spent in Norway, after six years of traveling up & down. Yet, I've completely wasted three evenings working till late in an empty open space, among cardboard boxes full of dusty books, rolls of disposed cables, keyboards and monitors in wait for someone to take them away.
Curtains are closing and I still linger on the stage, as if this could help me recollect all the wasted opportunities I had.

My photographic experience started here, on the banks of this town harbour, where you can still aim at people walking in the streets without being hit. I have still one night ahead and I can't miss it. I just need to get out of this state of lethargy I have recently entered. This could hopefully be a sign of recovery. The world is waiting for me!
And maybe, at least, a piece of good red herring I'll be.

Northern Green

Closed for lack of clients

This time I can't either say I was late ...

On the sky again

Sunday afternoon, time to move on again.

Oslo

I'm spending many weeks of this first half of the year in Oslo. I'm getting used to a blinding sunlight that lingers low on the horizon for endless minutes before falling behind the western line. My shadow walks distant far from me.

Help Japan earthquake victims

The PrintAid Project

Three Merseyside based photographers have set up the PrintAid Project to help the victims of the recent earthquake in Japan. The PrintAid Project involves renowned photographers and designers from around the world who have donated their images to be sold on the project website. All money raised will go to the Red Cross charity.The project will tentatively raise money in two ways:

• A selection of prints to be sold at a special reduced rate from the website.

• Limited edition prints to be sold in a series of charity auctions on this website.

The artists involved in this project have donated their images and time to the project and set up the website for free. This means that after printing and postage costs, every penny raised will be donated to the victims of the Tohoku earthquake.The site is accepting submissions for possible inclusion via the submission page: theprintaidproject.com/submissions

Klippan exhibition

On display on 591

Mr Urbano wrote: "I get a sense of a struggle with geometry, and how to come to terms with it by turning to nature. Klippan is a place with the presence of the sea and the archipelago - beyond the bridge and the city traffic. I watch people waiting for something. Something is happening, although not immediate or visible - there is a strange undertone that Tiberio captures so well."

Click on the poster above to go to the exhibition.

Here it is!

After almost a whole year I managed to make the final effort and get to the end. Now my first photobook is ready and I'm feeling proud and happy. I'll receive my personal copy winthin a week. I'm just sorry that most probably I'll be in Norway when the book will arrive in my office. I'll have to wait some more.
But now I need to know what other people think of it. Anyone can leaf through the book pages using Blurb's preview facility (just click on the picture below). I'm not expecting for someone to buy it, even though it is actually possible. I'd certainly appreciate if you let me know your opinion, either good or bad.

Enjoy!

Thinking Spots

These are "samples" I took with my falling apart and half blind mobile phone on the island of Branno, few months ago. I use to make these short journeys on ferry boats from Saltholmen peer, in west end of Goteborg, when I'm lucky enough to have a couple of hours left before sunset. Ferries and small islands become my thinking spots. I can't find better places to meet myself alone.

Photographs, (C) Tiberio Fanti

Behind the glass of the small red wooden cabin on the highest top of Branno an open book, two candles, a window, an island, then another island and the ocean.
How comes this kind of relic, half scrap of plastic, metal, Ni-Cd & silicon is still able to give me emotions?

Movie or Photography?

Half the world wide web media have been recently talking about a footage collecting in a rapid and (IMHO) perfectly mounted sequence many short video clips taken in Astoria, New York Queens, when a snow blizzard struck NY district the day after Christmas. "Idiot with a tripod", photographed (sic) and edited by NYer director Jamie Stuart, is a short but great documentary film that keeps the eyes of the audience clutched to the monitor for the whole three minutes of its length. The short, admitedly an homage to the 1929 Dziga Vertov's masterpiece "Man with a Movie Camera", is so impressive that someone (namely Roger Ebert, on his blog on Chicago Sun-Times) even claimed it deserves an Academy Award for the best short live-action subject: "You can tell from the cinematography he knew exactly what he was doing and how to do it. He held the Vertov film in memory. Stuart must already been thinking of how he would do the edit and sound. Any professional will tell you the talent exhibited here is extraordinary."

I'm not able to add anything more to help J. Stuart to get the deserved credits. Yet, the vision of his work sparkled some candid questions in my mind (you might be surprised, as well as I am, why I never asked them before ...): how strong is today, with current technology (the film was shot with a Canon D7), the relation between moving pictures and still? And how large is the blurred area that separates the first from the latter? Is it growing or narrowing? I'd really like to know your opinion about.

Idiot with a Tripod from The Mutiny Company on Vimeo.