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.