Blog - Giovanni Maggiora

Seongsu Cool (#NotInGangnam)

Giovanni Maggiora — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 13:18:50 +0000

The funny thing is, the K-Pop song Gangnam Style ( https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0 ) actually mocks the bling-y, trashy-rich Gangnam crowds who are so sure of the superiority of their ways that —I’m told— they have ended up embracing the song, believing it a form of flattery. Good for them! Indeed, shall we say, they’re fun to watch for a while, but given the choice, you’ll certainly find me #NotInGangnam during my wandering weekends…

Onion Cafe, Seongsu-dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul

The quest for My Favorite ’Hood has started, and is off on the right foot. Last Sunday, one in particular was a welcome find: you are on my map, 성수 (Seongsu)!

With a special mention to Onion Café and its labyrinthic, rooms and courtyards. You can be sure I’ll be back, as I can’t think of a much cooler and relaxed place to spend the waning hours of a Sunday afternoon.

Seoul Nights

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 16:48:08 +0000

After the quarantine, Seoul at last.

It’s not even two weeks that I’m here, and time flies by way too fast, when you’re fighting to absorb a gigantic data dump faster than than a 5G-speed mobile antenna is throwing at you. Data that come in a thousand forms.

Seocho-i-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul

On the business side, new people and endless information as I ramp up as fast as possible the consulting mission that brought me here in Korea (in the “new economy” space, which requires an additional layer of exciting cultural adaptation for the “old economy” guy that I am).

And on the personal side, a whole city and its operating system: the essentials of functioning and moving in a metropolis 10 times larger than the village I live in, Paris; the rules to follow and habits one forms in this super-controlled COVID world (I’ve been temperature-checked more times since I landed here than the entire rest of my not-so-short life); of course the food, part of a whole culture together with a different language and script.

A language digression: I must try and get a bit further than just saying 안녕하세요 (“hello”) and 감사합니다 (“thank you”) every other second… even if the Koreans themselves are forever peppering their talk this way, together with plenty of 네 which means “yes” but mostly “I heard you” and “right?”. I can read the script, and that’s one step forward compared to the minefield of Japanese kanjis, but that does not mean understanding what one reads…

(By the way, I’m suddenly realizing that there is some benefit to the synthetic nature of a kanji — the instant recognition of a meaning independently of a sound: 中 is “middle” even if you don’t know that it reads “naka” in Japanese and “zhōng” in Chinese, and 大 is “big” whether it reads “ō” or “dà”. They use these two kanjis even here in Korea, as shorthand to show medium and large portions on restaurant menus…)

But enough on language….

I was talking of data overflow. Well, another one comes from the visual landscape.

After three years in old, quaint Europe, the Asian urban environment is assaulting me again. I’d had some training in Tōkyō, but it takes a moment to get used again to the relentlessness of an Asian metropolis. It’s slowly getting back at me, the familiarity I had built back then and there. For the time being, though, I still have to find my footing, and choosing my frames while shooting is still a very tentative venture. It will take time before one or more visual narratives emerge from my raw files. Long editing sessions await me this winter. But I guess the temptation of a preview is too strong.

So here we are, with a possible theme to develop in the next weeks. The city at night. Maybe a cliché, but still one with an irresistible emotional resonance. Enjoy. More will sure come.

Quarantine Skies

Giovanni Maggiora — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 13:10:15 +0000

A window, for fourteen days my only connection with the world other than screens of all sizes. Beyond the glass, non-descript construction, the hills. And then the sky, with its forever changing flux of weather and light conditions.

Now that I’m packed and ready to leave the room which was my shell for two weeks, it’s time to look back and realize I might, perhaps, just look back with some strange affection to the show that kept me company.

Cheoin-gu, Yongin-si, South Korea — Quarantine Day 8, 6:06pm

September 7 postscript: as it turns out, my window view in Seoul is now a vertical slash between high-rise buldings. Turns out I will indeed miss the view in Yongin. On the other hand, I can enjoy the sky from the streets now, and: it feel darn good to be able to leave one’s hotel room after all!

Quarantine room

Giovanni Maggiora — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 14:18:24 +0000

For fourteen days my world has shrunk again, tighter than it’s ever been. Lockdown at home back in March–May was longer, perhaps, but its confines less strict and much more familiar, the outdoors not fully prohibited. This time, it’s down to a single room for fourteen days: the corridor out of bounds, trespassing may lead to deportation.

Cheoin-gu, Yongin-si, South Korea — Quarantine Day 7, 10:35am

And yet, at the end of this Day 10, this shrunken world does not feel so small after all.

Cheoin-gu, Yongin-si, South Korea — Quarantine Day 10, 12:09pm

The human brain is an amazingly flexible organ, adapting to its environment like an octopus squeezing through the smallest nooks of the rock in effortless shape-shifting.

Suddenly, the narrow confines of the room expand to reveal multiple fractal dimensions, those that would otherwise pass unnoticed.

At the same time, this collapsed black hole I’ve fell into is pierced by technological wormholes, the screens keeping me thankfully, virtually tethered to the untouchable world out there.

A duality that has become the new reality of our age. Welcome to the Matrix.

Jetlagged night

Giovanni Maggiora — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 02:29:01 +0000

Seven time zones eastwards. As much as you think you’re smarter than your body clock, that you learnt the tricks to beat it, jet lag still wins. You manage to fall asleep ‘round (the new) midnight, or so you think. Then you wake up in the middle of the (new) night, over and over again.

Cheoin-gu, Yongin-si, South Korea — Quarantine Day 5, 1:02am

Open your eyes, and the quarantine room takes new shapes, revealed by the artificial light out there. Might as well follow the ghosts, freeze them on the sensor to prove that, while you sleep, the world keeps being. Tonight, you’re just catching it in the act, as you wait for dawn to come.

Skies

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 23:46:40 +0000

Plural, for the sky is forever changing. So easy to overlook when it’s a sliver squeezed in between roof-tops in narrow city streets. So impossible to ignore when it’s almost exclusively the one thing in front of you for a few, blessed days of waterfront contemplation. Blue, but most times not quite. A balsam for the eye, heart and soul. A battery recharge for the weeks and months to come.

Clausura

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 08:58:05 +0000

It’s trending hard, inevitably: indoors photography. We are all itching to shoot, but confined at home. Rediscovering everyday objects we did not even notice any more, in B.C. days. Seeing again. Proof maybe that clausura brings clarity to the mind, and hopefully to the heart. To the eye, surely.

Hopefully, heart mind and eye will emerge from this aligned as they never were before. And hopefully not just in photography, but in life at large.

Tubular Bells

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 13:29:52 +0000

Strange how words and phrases can stick in your mind and then unexpectedly resurge into consciousness, like dormant magma up a volcanic vent.

Tubular Bells. Had to go to Wikipedia to be reminded that it was the debut album by Mike Oldfield, back in 1973. That was before commercial radio in Italy; at best, then, I may have picked it up on RAI's Radio 2, "Supersonic" was the evening rock program I was glued to as an early teenager. More likely a little later on. Oh man...

Anyways, tubular bells and simple plumbing tubes. Plenty of these to observe, if you care to, when you walk around town in Paris. Black and white gives them a sculptural quality that made them part of my "make a series within 200m from home" workshop task with Patrick. Here’s a few…

All Ricoh GR III, except for the final one, Leica M10 with Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.2 — processed with Capture One.

No worries, I’ll get back to color soon…

Kitchen Light

Giovanni Maggiora — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 09:27:08 +0000

My kitchen's window, facing a bright wall, turns out to be a perfect soft-box. In this second portfolio, no “stories”, just visual pleasure, playing with light and textures. The little Ricoh GR III proves again to an immensely versatile tool to unleash creativity, not just in the street...

A Voiello Story

Giovanni Maggiora — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 10:49:22 +0000

I've been away from the blog far too long. Not good, this lack of presence and commitment. My shooting, also, has perhaps been more scattered and unfocused than usual. I blame it on being lost in my search for a proper color language and proper color processing tools, though perhaps this is too easy of a cop-out excuse...
Fact is, there are surely themes that have been recurring in my archives, and in retrospect there is material in there to "find" some decent series (the Sicily trip in October last year, my wanderings in Paris' "Chinatowns" in the 13th and around Belleville, to name the easiest ones). I'll get back to these in other posts.

Today, I want to celebrate my friend and mentor, Patrick LaRoque in Montréal, Canada. He's helping me find my way through workflow issues in Capture One (yes, it's goodbye Lightroom), but I also asked him to help me past my (perceived or real, whatever) creative block.
He recently gave me an assignment that was apparently simple but magically effective: (1) forget color for a moment, it confuses your brain too much: go back to your old reflexes, shoot the assignment in BW; (2) forget searching for subjects far and wide: focus on home, or your city block at most, and make one series of images within those confines.
It was disorienting at first, and then "click", the light switched on and I started *seeing* again. Here's the first "homework". A simple tale of small pleasures: a Voiello story.

The lesson learnt: stay with your subject, see the light, see the forms, tell a story.

PS: Voiello, owned by Barilla, is just one of many pasta brands that make their way to my pantry. I’ve not quite decided which is my favorite…

“East of the Sun”:  the challenge and reward of making a photobook – Part II

Giovanni Maggiora — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 17:47:07 +0000

In part I of this essay, I covered the “making of” my photobook, “East of the Sun”, focusing on the preparation and inspiration for the project and on the actual experience of shooting in the field. In this second part, I will share with you the equally interesting and rewarding “homework” part of the process: editing, sequencing and laying out your images in book format. It’s actually the really hard bit. How do you make sense of 8000 frames? How do you attack the mountain?

Editing down

Two key concepts. #1: Give it time; #2: Don’t work alone!

The East of the Sun portfolio consists in 34 images drawn from the 8000 shots I brought back. How did I get there? Well, not in a single jump for sure!

The first couple of editing rounds are the easiest. Round one, you kill the obvious stuff: the exposure errors, the framing mishaps, the most “meh”, obviously pointless images. I typically edit out two out three images this way, rather quickly. Round two, you will manage to do another 2/3 cull without much anguish: it’s not difficult to see that some images are clearly stronger than others. In the end, you will have saved roughly 10% of your set. More manageable, and already a bit stronger.

Now it’s time to take a step back, let things seep, start really ‘seeing’ your images (lesson #1: give it time). One good way to do so is to spend some time with each image doing some initial post-processing. I had already converted everything to basic BW at the outset, but now I moved to doing some of the most obvious Lightroom adjustments that each image deserved (contrast and exposure mostly); not much, but enough to start seeing the potential of each image and to make sure all candidates started the next round on an even playing field.

Time to apply lesson #2: don’t work alone. Enroll some help! I actually did a third editing round first and got down to 300 surviving images, but killing my ‘babies’ was getting to be seriously difficult. Receiving outside feedback became vital. It is best done “live” in front of a screen, with two or three photographer friends who are willing to discover your still-raw work (they will: I’ve done it for friends and it’s a very valuable experience also from the other side of the table); you’ll see them reacting in real time, and more often than not you will say “of course!” when they go “meh…” or “great!”, or point to the precise weakness of an image that should be addressed in post-production.

I also put my set on a Dropbox folder and asked ten or so photographer friends all over the world to react with picks and written comments. It’s actually incredible to see how 10 different people asked to pick 10 images out of a set of 300 will not come back with 10x10=100 different choices, but converge on 20-25 or so consensus picks: figuring out what drives those choices will help you to understand in which direction your own next edit should go.

This peer review pushed me to go through editing round 4; I got down to 120 images that I felt really good about. Almost done! Time to go back to the Develop module in Lightroom and do some more post-processing, refining the images to their final form.

Great, but 120 images were still too many, a book or an exhibition portfolio would need to be 30-40 maximum. At this point I felt totally stuck, unable to choose among that strong set that I had become by now (two months later) strongly attached to. A round 5 seemed an almost impossible task. What now?

Editing up

Time to apply principle #3: don’t just edit down, you must also learn to edit up, build around a core.

I got unstuck during a workshop on photobook-making I joined right at this point: perfect timing! Organized by Laura di Marco at Spazio Labo’ in Bologna, Italy, it was led by Mayumi Suzuki, a Japanese photographer friend whose work I admire (“The Restoration Will”), and her publisher, Eva Maria Kuntz, of Ceiba Editions in Italy.

I went there with 5x7 prints of my 120 ‘picks’, and work started by spreading them out on a large table. I’d say this is actually principle #4 of editing: use physical prints and put those images on a wall or on a table where they can stay as long as it takes. You can’t usefully look at more than a few images side by side on a screen, and you will miss the amazingly powerful and precious mind mechanisms that are triggered by seeing an entire set of images at the same time.

Eva and Mayumi started off by asking me the magical question: “what is it that you are trying to say with this work?”, another way of asking me to define my project’s concept... I told them about the “looking for Murakami” idea, but I realized as that I was far less clear in my mind than I should have been by now — and as result those 120 photos were still all over the place, lacked unity.

And after much conversation and observation, something happened: Eva started picking one image, then another, skipping many that were maybe good but were still too obviously ‘the usual street photography in Japan done by a Western eye we’ve seen so many times’ (no matter how I had tried to look at Japan in a different way), and instead zeroing in on others that were more intimate, less descriptive. She was going for poetry, not prose.

I thought her goal was to edit down from 120 to 30 final images but — no! — what she left me with was ten images that spoke in the same voice and that suddenly I recognized as the essence of what I had been looking for in five weeks and 8000 shots in Japan. And she told me: “Work on these. Build around them, find other images that complement them. You’ll have your book.” Wow…

And, returning home, that’s what I did for the next three months. The ten images went up on the wall in front of my desk, and slowly but steadily I added more, finding couplings that spoke to each other, creating chords out of individual notes, reinforcing the feeling of the series. Sometimes an apparently weaker image turned out to be essential to complement a strong one. ‘Absolute quality’ does not exist. It’s all about what best contributes to the overall impression, to the atmosphere you want to evoke and to the message you want to convey.

Sequencing

As you start the ‘edit up’ process putting those prints up on the wall, as you test an addition after the other, as more images begin to condense around the initial core set, as you take an image out subtly changing the direction of the overall series, you will also almost inevitably begin to feel the instinctive need to organize the set in a sequence.

Just as you will find pairings of images that work together like a musical chord, you’ll begin to sequence those chords into an actual song. Where do you want to lead your ‘listener’ to? How many turns you will make him take as he gets there?

As photobook editor Teun van der Heijden likes to stress in his seminars (http://www.heijdenskarwei.com), a photobook needs the same elements that underpin a narrative (in a book or a movie; in a non-literal sense, in a piece of music): time and tension, building to a climax and falling to a resolution. Pauses are just as important as strong moments; anticipation, sometimes leading to surprising turns, is essential to retain attention. Keep the reader guessing, keep him asking for more, but also lead him/her one page after the other.

Easier said than truly explained and done, I know. But think about common threads that can link one image after the other, both literally (content) and visually (dominant colors, contrast levels, blur vs sharpness, geometry). Think about the strongest images as anchors to the flow, and how the ‘softer’ ones will build up to the strong ones and offer contrast and release after them. Don’t make the sequence too obvious, but not too jarring and disjointed either (unless you want to create such a sentiment in the reader as part of your vision).

You’ll find out that this process is the most challenging but also the most satisfying. Best done with physical prints, but you may also choose to sequence them on a screen, building a virtual book dummy using for example the ‘Book’ module in Lightroom (not as easy to use as I’d like, and not flexible enough, but it’s worth investing some time to learn it).

Here again, lessons #1 and #2 still apply. Take your time, and get feedback. In my case, I went through nine iterations of the book over six months before reaching its final shape. Crucial input can come from your photo-friends, but also from several professionals you can meet taking advantage of formal portfolio readings and every other chance you get to show your dummy: gallery owners, book editors, pro photographers, you name it. Network, network, network! Most people will be happy to flip through your pages and give you a pinch of advice. And don’t forget to get back to them with your final product: it’s polite and it will get you further in developing your relationships.

Layout and production

Once the dummy is there in terms of image set and sequence, you’ll be facing a task that’s not necessarily part of a photographer’s skillset: laying out your images on actual pages. Graphic design is a profession of its own, and in an ideal world you would partner with a pro to give justice to your photo work.

But let’s face it, we don’t have unlimited budgets and it’s wise to start small… Use the page templates you can find in software packs such as Lightroom, or those that are provided by on-line book-printing services like Blurb. Be minimalist: keep it simple is a good working principle. And again: study! Look at as many books as you can, see how others have approached this step. Personally, I have always loved graphic design even without ever practicing it, so I found this part of the process quite fascinating too, but again: don’t overdo it for the sake of it…

Book-making has become an art in its own right, and some productions are truly impressively complex in their technical execution. Sometimes these days I even feel things have gone too far in the desperate race of creating unique products that can be noticed in the crowd of competing work. I have the utmost respect for “the photobook as an object” (the tagline of Yumi Goto at Reminders Photographers Stronghold in Tōkyō: http://reminders-project.org/rps/), but I’m perhaps showing my age here, and tell you that a photobook for me is about the photos, not the book… After all, if Alec Soth with his “I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating” did not go too fancy with his layouts and book construction, you need not too…

(Note to Yumi: this does not mean I would not love to participate in a book-making extended workshop at RPS one day, with my next project perhaps! It’s just that for now my learning process is not advanced enough…)

As for actual production, realistically your first book has little chance to be picked up by a editing house; self-publishing is the way to go. I have opted to work with a small shop whose owner-operator loves his printers, but you can probably find a suitable solution also by using on-line services, or move up a notch and work with more serious offset printers (with matching budgets though). I tried to give my book a more personal feel by hand-stitching the pages myself, which is yet another whole ball game. Not sure it is necessary, and whether you do it yourself or leave it to the pros is another very personal choice and a function of your budget and personal interests and abilities. It was good to be able to say “I made this with my own hands”, though!

And, you’ll find out that your finished product will become a powerful door-opener as you continue to introduce yourself to professionals in your networking effort, building for the future.

Daunting? Yes! Exhilarating and rewarding? Yes, yes, yes. Book-making will change your perception of photography, and it will probably change you in the process. Why wait? Get going…

“East of the Sun”: the challenge and reward of making a photobook – Part I

Giovanni Maggiora — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 17:38:44 +0000

I hope that leafing through the pages of my book, “East of the Sun”, you will feel an echo of what I felt during my last stay in Japan. (You will find the others in the photo gallery dedicated to the book, here.) If you hear that echo, if these images move you, I’ll tell myself I succeeded.

In this two-part blog post / essay, which is also going to be published by my good friends Don and Oliver on Inspired Eye Magazine, I’ll try to share with you the “making of” the book and the lesson I learnt in the process: that creating a project-based series and putting it in book form is much more powerful and rewarding than shooting individual, disconnected images.

Like I guess many of us do, I too have long focused on perfecting the individual frame, on the rules of composition (Olivier here at IE has plenty to teach on the subject), on the post-processing tools that help us to strengthen the image and focus it on the point that triggered our eyes, heart and mind’s attention to begin with (Don I’m thinking of you…).

Like we all do, I too love to see a great shot splashed across my entire screen; I feel good when it is mine and humbled and eager to learn when it’s someone else’s. And I love even more when I see that image on paper, for nothing like a good Baryta print condenses so completely the pleasure of photography to its essence.

Make no mistake, each single image is important and must be ‘right’. But in challenging myself to make “East of the Sun” I experienced first-hand how when images get paired and sequenced they gain an additional dimension and a new strength. From the whole, new meaning is created.

A photobook project does not happen in a vacuum and is the fruit of a multi-step process. From preparation and inspiration, through shooting, then editing to get to a tight set, sequencing the images, choosing their lay-out on paper, and finally producing the book: every step adds a layer of interconnected, potentially recursive complexity.

I’ll address each of them in this essay. Doing them right is a whole new level of challenge compared to making a single image. But much more meaningful and satisfying, you will see.

And if you live your project fully, with intent and intensity, you’ll find out that it is a process that happens to you as much as you make it happen. Like life itself, living it transforms you; and like life itself, your path will be strongly influenced by the people you meet along the way.

Inspiration and preparation.

There’s as many ways to identify and choose a photobook project as there are photographers attempting them, so my personal experience is just a sample of one, and just a step in my own learning curve.

The three key lessons I learnt are, one, that it is essential to have or find a strong motivating trigger to inspire and guide you: the more your project will be rooted deep inside you, almost a necessity, the more it will be meaningful; two, that you must feed the project with solid preparation: go deep, steep in your subject, study from as varied sources as you can; three, that you must not fear the ‘blank page’: don’t get frozen by not having a perfectly formed idea upfront, let the project take shape at almost unconscious level.

My trigger? Love and frustration. Prior to the “East of the Sun” project, I had already been on a first extended photo-trip to Japan. I came back completely in love with that country, its people and their culture. But also frustrated, feeling that I had barely scratched the surface with too much of an outsider eye. Yes, I had done hopefully decent ‘street’ work in my personal style (see the June 2017 issue of Inspired Eye), but no, I had not escaped the trap of marveling about such a totally different visual landscape, and my real emotions were struggling to emerge from those images. Could I get past the obvious, get closer, pierce the surface, move away from the much-abused ‘street’ canon?

That’s where preparation kicked in. I had many months between the first trip and my second to search for an answer to that question.

I found a key in the novels of Haruki Murakami, who dragged me in his intimistic and often magical view of his country, made of solitudes and awkward human relations, little details, small daily rituals, connections between man and nature. His work really resonated in my mind. (My book’s title, “East of the Sun”, is a pun on one of Murakami’s best books, “South of the Border, West of the Sun”.)

The more I got to see Japan through Murakami’s eyes and heart, the more I realized that I needed to go back and see if I would now experience the country in a different way, and inevitably shoot differently as well.

I also immersed myself in the work of as many classic and modern Japanese photography masters: not with the aim of replicating their work, but to see and feel Japan through Japanese eyes, to glimpse what defined it for them, to become a bit less of an outsider. And I spent time on books about the Japanese aesthetic, first and foremost perhaps “In Praise of Shadows” by Junichirō Tanizaki.

Was I crystal-clear in my mind about what I would do? No, but I trusted that Japan itself would help me find my way, so long as I showed him (le Japon, il Giappone: latin languages love to pigeonhole countries in gender forms…) my respect and love.

Shooting

You have a project in mind, perhaps you already have a bunch of images in your archives that you recognize could be the core around which to build a fuller, focused body of work, but will you obsessively look for the images that you need to make it from scratch or complete it?

Depending on what the project is, you may have to, but I would argue that while actually shooting you should never put yourself in too tight of a straightjacket: let yourself be yourself, let the project be an influence but not a diktat; you would otherwise risk blocking your progress, inhibit your instincts. Let the inspiration and preparation work influence you almost subconsciously.

In my case, I landed in Tōkyō, settled down and started working the same way I had in my first trip: following my nose around every corner that triggered my curiosity, framing my images pretty much as I always do. But guess what, without quite realizing it my eyes kept gravitating to details that I had ignored the first time around, my walkabouts moved to alleys I had not explored, my itinerary brought me farther from the beaten path; the echo of my Murakami readings was constantly playing in my mind.

It was disconcerting at first: after ten days or so, flipping through the work I’d done so far, I felt I was not even close to the quality of ‘street’ work I had achieved on the first trip: what was wrong? I tried to calm myself, be mindful of the fact that I was unfairly comparing a couple of thousand unedited images to the 30 or so that I had crystallized in my first trip’s portfolio out of 6000 shots. And I realized that indeed my eyes had been influenced by all that reading: even if they were lost in the messy rubble of the raw material, my photos felt different. I was perhaps getting somewhere, but still I could not quite yet see what I was getting at. Scary, but I soldiered on…

(As a side note, one thing I definitively learnt in Japan: photography is a solitary activity. In no way I could have dragged my wife through those days and miles of apparently aimless wandering. Being alone and letting serendipity do its work is a great way to open yourself to your surroundings, to magic discoveries, to surprising encounters with strangers, language barriers notwithstanding…)

After five weeks and countless miles walked (I lost three kilos in the process, good!), I went back home. And there the really hard bit started. How do you make sense of 8000 frames? How do you attack the mountain? I’ll address the editing process in the next installment of this essay…

Mea She'arim

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 08:36:22 +0000

A few days in Israel, the trigger for the trip being the good news that my "East of the Sun" work was selected as one of 20 finalists among 450 participants to the 2018 Meitar Awards and shown at the Photo Is:rael international photography festival in Tel Aviv.

But I could not go all the way to Israel for the first time and not also take at least a fleeting peek at Jerusalem.

Photography comes from the heart and the mind before it gets to the eye and the camera, and because of that it is almost impossible to photograph in a place that we see for the first time.

I spent less than 48 hours in Jerusalem, and barely began to understand that complex crossroad of civilizations and religions. I did not photograph much: I could not care to make 'postcard pictures' and I struggled to find a visual rhythm, inspiration.

One area of the city, however, sparked a suddenly intense connection — as much as one can connect with an apparently alien place and people.

Mea She'arim.

The ultra-orthodox quarter. Stuck in some other time, refusing to be like any other place. A refuge, I guess, a defiant fortress. A challenge to all of us who are not part of it. The challenge of seeing through the difference and reaching to our common humanity.

And with the emotions came the photographs, flooding through my eyes and camera. In black and white, timeless.

Bleu-Blanc-Rouge

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 08:58:17 +0000

Well, it's been a most interesting World Cup and the French team won out of sheer team spirit, youthful enthusiasm and amazing talent.

And for one night, Parisians have had every reason to turn their streets and squares into a gigantic, jolly party venue. Fraternité in happiness.

Well done, les Bleus, and thanks for sharing your joy, Parisians.

(Click on any image to open slide viewer.)

Passers-by

Giovanni Maggiora — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 07:41:48 +0000

Guilty as charged. The web is inundated with random shots of people in the street, defined as "street photography" just because they are shot in the street. Most times I dismiss them as not particularly interesting, surely anonymous. So, why do I do the same in my own practice?

What makes a random passer-by worth photographing? Perhaps, just perhaps, the key is not in the subject but in the way one approaches the subject: distance, composition, movement. I guess I have developed a bit of a signature look, in this regard. Color, too, why not. (Yes, color again... a 2018 new direction.)

I'm not sure this is the path I want to keep following going forward, but when you hit an inspirational 'blank', as I have hit in the past couple of months, the best cure is to 'just do it', and if 'doing it' means going back to familiar habits that you thought you had overcome, so be it... Of course, nothing very familiar in shooting color, for me; so that's at least part of the creativity kickstart I was trying to initiate with these outings.

Café Life

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 18:14:32 +0000

Parisians will hang out on the sidewalks even in winter, but warmer weather makes sitting at a café table even more of a pleasure, I'd say a must. Some do it in chatty company, some do it in lonely concentration. I'll never tire of watching them go about their business as I walk by. And from time to time it's good to take a break and join them.

With the approaching summer, the sun has gained strength and made photography tougher. I was born in late fall, harsh light is not my friend, heat even less so. I'm not sure what I'd do if you put me in Cuba, shooting on a David Alan Harvey workshop...

Color however continues to question my eyes, teasing me to try and try again. I'm not done with my experimenting. I've not been very inspired and prolific this past few weeks, but a bunch of images has built up in my 'inbox' and I finally got around to editing them. Here's a few...

Color People

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 14:50:55 +0000

Or simply, people. As much as I was trying, during these sessions, to shoot not just IN color but FOR color, the pull of the subject was often stronger than that of the colors. One does not put aside an ingrained approach to subjects and composition that has for years deliberately ignored color as part of the visual language.

Arguably, some if not many of the images in this series, starting perhaps with the woman in the opening frame above, are not good enough from a color perspective, if by "color perspective" one means the predominance of color as a composition element if not as the central subject of the image per se.

I'm not saying here that color HAS to be the central subject. It can also be used a way to focus the attention on the central subject of an image, when the definition of "subject" is dictated by other factors. And it's definitely great when color becomes a (sometimes subtle) way to define the mood of an image or a series, almost cinematically (for this, see this blogpost by Patrick LaRoque in Montreal, Canada: his blog is a valuable learning tool for me).

On the other hand, a purely factual and/or documentary but non-assumed and random presence of color is, at least in my mind, less interesting — at best neutral and at worst a potential distraction from other elements of the image.

So, look at this gallery and ask yourself (and let me know, if you have a moment): which images "work" (alone or within the series) and why? One thing is sure on my end here: learning to shoot and edit for color after so much time spent on BW will be a long process...

Color Windows

Giovanni Maggiora — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 12:16:52 +0000

Summertime has come to Paris well ahead of time, albeit I suppose just temporarily. The light has suddenly changed, almost Mediterranean in its harshness. It's difficult to adapt so fast to the new deep shadows and to the suddenly bright color palette that the city has dressed herself with.

The visual shock brings a renewed jolt of creative juices, calling me again to the tempting world of color photography.

It's a Copernican revolution, and it will take some time to decide whether this different language is one I can express my trues self in.

On the one hand, straying from BW makes me think I'm polluting my visual signature, and makes be abandon the sound principles of never-ending quest for improvement of a core technique that is behind much of the work philosophy I admire in countless Japanese craftsmen.

On the other, great masters of the history of photography at some point in their careers have moved from BW to color (rarely the opposite I guess) as a way to reawaken their vision, to find new creative avenues. Learn this from them, too...

The debate could never end, but what's the point of debating with myself. Just follow the gut, and the gut lately has been asking for this challenge.

So here's a fresh series, on a theme I've endlessly loved: a window pane, and what lies behind it, sometimes forgotten. Take a peek...

Bologna, and the M10

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 11:40:34 +0000

Bologna la Rossa. I had last set foot there 30-odd years ago, a lifetime. I went back to spend a weekend at a workshop on photobook making organized by SpazioLabò and led by Eva-Maria Kuntz of Ceiba Editions and Mayumi Suzuki who came on purpose from Japan (her "Restoration Will" exibition will run at SL for two months, go check it out; poignantly, it opened on the very 7th anniversary of the Tohoku quake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011). But the workshop deserves a separate post. Back to Bologna...

What a pleasant re-discovery. Laid back, young (with the oldest operating University in Europe, founded in 1088), epicurean, with a magnificent downtown area with arcades-lined streets and, yes, plenty of red mortar and bricks to give it its nickname (well, red also stands or rather stood for communist; but those days are waning).

It's difficult to start photographing an unfamiliar city straight away, before its character and rhythms start making a deeper impression on you and you can start projecting yourself in your surroundings, make them a little bit yours. On day one, it's mostly about superficial impressions, not quite postcards maybe but certainly not deep. It's a kind of frustrating regression to reptilian-brain reactions, going back to the way one may have photographed at the very beginning; it takes a few hours to shake the eyes back into seeing the way they do now, and even then of course it all remains a bit of an academic exercise, very distant, formal and composition- rather than emotion-driven; impossible to capture the soul of a place so soon.

All of that red was demanding attention, so here it is, a brief experiment in color photography again. Perhaps I've been watching too many Joel Meyerowitz images, recently, he's made me thirsty for color. Maybe this is an experiment, maybe this is the start of something. I've been shooting BW exclusively for the past six-years-plus. Maybe I need a challenge to raise my game...

Oh, for those who care about gear: I had brought my Leica M9 with me, with the good old, pre-Asph, Summicron 35mm to stay light and flexible. Some of these images, however, have been shot with a Leica M10 borrowed for a couple of hours from the Bologna Leica Store (courtesy of my friend Luca Bottazzi — grazie, Luca). No way to make comparisons as I did not use the two cameras on the same subjects at the same time of day. I did not push the M10 sensor beyond 800 ISO, where they say it leaves the M9's CCD in the dust; it sure feels crisper, and a tad colder, but not in a way that a reasonable amount of post-processing cannot cure. Operationally, a total pleasure of a tool. Thinner, a 'real M' as it is promised to be. Not as quiet as I thought, but a totally different, less metallic shutter & rewind noise. Beautiful viewfinder indeed. And a more immediate useability of exposure compensation, a big weakness in the M9 in my opinion. Great camera...

Darkness falls

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 23:50:26 +0000

I've not posted anything on this blog for a month, and I should not leave these pages languish too long, even if I am almost completely immersed in a different project: making sense of the images I brought back from Japan in December, with the help and encouragement of some of my good friends near and afar around the world (you know who you are...).

Still, even if I have not been writing here, I have not let too many days go by without giving a workout to my eyes and my lenses. For the moment, darkness still falls early, and the weather adds its own coat of non-light. The city tries to fight back, and I love this struggle that's playing out in the streets. One evening some ten days ago, my camera badly wanted to turn vertical at every chance; I let her do her thing...

A Spanish Interlude – 2

Giovanni Maggiora — Sat, 06 Jan 2018 12:13:05 +0000

One of the unexpected bonuses of choosing Carmona as home base was the fact that we had a 45 minute bus ride to reach Sevilla every day. Inconvenient, on the surface of it, but a precious window into real life outside of the touristy bustle of Sevilla itself. Along the way, the bus would stop at motorway junctions to pick up and let off passengers in what looked like the middle of nowhere (especially in pitch-dark nighttime).

And the middle of nowhere is often great to fix in the frame of the viewfinder. Life, suspended.

At the far end of the bus ride lay Sevilla. I had last been there a scary 30+ number of years ago. I remembered (or had the impression of remembering, or remembered the impression of) a maze of quiet little streets and quaint corners. The streets are still there, and the quaint corners too. What has changed, is the complete surrender of the city, at least in its downtown historic center, to the tourist trade. Not quite at Venice levels, because the locals still seemed to be "using" their own city as if we visitors were not there, but it was difficult to find a spot which was not tourist-oriented.

Or actually, it was not that difficult. As usual, one just needs to get out of the downtown area and turn that extra corner. No more English menus and you are home. Passing the bridge over the Guadalquivir and entering the old potters' neighborhood of Triana was an even safer bet. It's great when city streets are really an open-air living room for everyone to share. A glass of beer always helps, too.

A Spanish Interlude – 1

Giovanni Maggiora — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 17:55:54 +0000

I've been away from this blog for way too long. While in Japan, I barely had time to upload files from my cards every evening and tag them with essential location data, but certainly not to do the editing and processing work that they will need and I have barely started. With over 8000 images to sort through, it will be a long time before something publishable emerges from them.

Life however goes on and with it come new images along the way. We spent a (very) few days in Andalucia right before year-end, and I carried with me one camera, the good old M9, and one lens, the 35 mm Summicron. Travel light, always a good practice. I did not shoot much, but some things caught my attention and inspired me to press the trigger.

Carmona is a quaint, mostly agricultural town of 27 thousand souls some 40km from Sevilla. We stayed there and commuted to Sevilla for daytime visits. It proved to be a good choice, we could savor some more laid-back atmosphere away from the bustle of tourist overflow in Sevilla. Much if not all of the city has retained the visual style establish centuries ago. Narrow streets barely fit for cars, two-storey white-washed buildings with hidden patios, plenty of churches but that's what you'd expect...

The young tend to fly away as usual, at least catch the bus to Sevilla. That leaves the old to give some life to the city. And this being Spain, more nuns per square meter than anywhere but perhaps in Rome...

Back to Japan

Giovanni Maggiora — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 20:17:17 +0000

Yes, I am going back to Japan. Call me crazy, but I am far from done discovering the country that has so much touched me back in January when I visited for the first time in my life. I know I’ve barely scratched the surface, and I feel the urge to go deeper, understand and savor more. This time, with a wider set of contacts, who are becoming real friends, some met during the January trip, others here in Europe at photo events such as the Rencontres in Arles and Paris Photo.

Jingūmae, Shibuya-ku

So, here we go. I’m bringing the same camera and lenses: I really don’t want the equipment to get in the way, and the 28+50mm has become the natural extension of my eye. No second guessing which focal length could work better than the one attached to the Leicas. Just get on with looking and shooting.

What I do not know, is what I will see. The novelty factor of the first trip is over. Shall I now move even closer to my shooting habits here in Paris? Shall the many months spent this year reading Japanese authors have left an unconscious imprint in my mind, and influence what will trigger my attention? Same question for the work of Japanese photographers, classic, modern and emerging alike, that I have exposed myself to in the last months. I’m curious to discover myself, again, through the lens of my camera.

I plan to leave the raw files build up and marinate until I return home and start the editing work with some distance from the immediate emotions of the moment of shooting. But who knows, I may break the rules from time to time, and share an early peek every day or two, together with the anecdotes of daily happenings and encounters.

Stay tuned for this visual diary...

Color. Again?

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 13:07:29 +0000

I realize this is the second time in barely a month that I find myself posting about color work. Something's stirring in my brain... Harry Gruyaert has left a mark?

It just happened, unconsciously at first. I was downloading a recent shoot done with the Leica M9 (with its by now old but mythically sensual CCD sensor) and the Elmarit 21mm f/2.8, a very tough focal to use but one I need to train on, because it can produce fantastic images when used properly. I lingered a bit longer than usual on the raw files, before going through the BW conversion process.

I never let that happen, because working BW images require a clean mental slate, undistracted by color content. This time, though, I could not let go of the color images, they were drawing me in like crazy. And suddenly I said to myself, don't resist, let it flow. A bit of editing down to a smaller batch, then some moderate (as always) post-processing of the files.

You'll have to judge for yourselves, but hey, there is something going on here. Sign of things to come in 2018?

Through the Looking Glass

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 09:37:01 +0000

There is something that happens when a glass pane separates you from your subject.

You suddenly get much closer than you would probably otherwise do, as if that physical barrier made the approach less invasive, providing a kind of shelter both to subjects and photographer.

Most times, actually, people keep doing what they are doing, oblivious to being shot. Reading, writing, eating.

And when they notice, it's a startled look that suddenly lights up their face. Deprived of verbal interaction, the are left with their eyes to say it all...

Color Nostalgia?

Giovanni Maggiora — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 07:29:41 +0000

I was chatting via Messenger the other night with Chad Tobin, my good friend in Nova Scotia. Chad and I share a passion for Leicas and I dare say an even greater passion for Japan. He's the one that pushed me over the edge in deciding to go to Tokyo last January, after many a Skype discussion about his own experience there. He's also the one that can call the great Robert Frank a friend and an (almost) neighbor, in his retreat up there in front of the ocean. (Check Chad's portraits of Frank here: http://www.chadtobin.com/robert-frank/, and then wander around his website to discover his other work.)

Well, this time our conversation turned to film photography and the fantastic hues that color slides can give us. I am convinced that equally great color can be extracted out of digital sensors (some at least!), provided one is good enough with post-processing on Lightroom. (Even Fuji's great in-camera color film simulations need some help later on, as the great Patrick LaRoque explains here: http://www.laroquephoto.com/blog/2017/7/13/all-the-green-we-wanted-a-technical-follow-up).

Still, the naked strength of color slide film is undeniable, and as we were talking I suddenly started thinking about the last time I shot color film, back in the US, circa 2006. Some of that work has ended up scanned into my LIghtroom library. Let me share a few images with you, for a change of scenery in a sea of BW work. For a moment, I've thought I may revive the good old Leica M6 and use it as my color photography tool. Let me marinate that idea, I'll keep you posted...

Almost on holiday

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 07:22:51 +0000

Few places are more quintessentially parisian than the sidewalk terrasses of a neighborhood café. Not the ones on the major tourist boulevards, but the local joint which is a home away from home, where friends gather to shoot the breeze, have a glass and a smoke, and be merrier-than-usual in this normally grumpy city.

Even more so when the weather turns nice, and the terrasse becomes a haven of quasi-holiday where for a time you can dress down and forget that you are still stuck in the tarmac jungle and not yet enjoying your God-given right to your congés.

Family Photos

Giovanni Maggiora — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 06:57:18 +0000

Family photos are by definition personal and their purpose is to be memory sakes, not "good" pictures. Says who?

I am guilty of that preconception, but how wrong have I been all along. Just look at Nobuyoshi Araki's "Sentimental Journey", shooting his wife. Or at what Nicholas Nixon has achieved with his series of portraits of his wife and her three sisters, taken over the course of 40 years. He's a master portraitist and these hardly fit the "family album" type candid photos that most of us take (or later regret not having taken, if we did not). But still...

The point is, we can have the cake and eat it too. Nothing prevents us from applying to our personal visual memories the same care and vision that we use to make our "portfolio" work. Which by the way also helps exercising our skills, especially when our subject is a never-still two-year old energy ball. And, most importantly, will leave us with images that mean more, to us, than many others we take as part of our "work".

Thank you, Leonardo, for being my subject during two whole days in Brussels. And thank you, Iris and Pierre, for making him the fun little boy that he is.

Rooted in the land

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 18:24:25 +0000

I have not spent perhaps enough time outside of the cities, in Japan. Understanding the Japanese is impossible if you don't understand the land (the mountains, the rice fields) and the sea. Here's a little visual homage to the agricultural roots of the country, from the visit to Takayama, in Gifu Prefecture, across the Japanese Alps. Sake brewing, and grilling of sake lees, is a longstanding tradition of the town, just as the now forgotten silk making industry which was practiced in amazingly beautiful, all-wood atelier-homes.

Rencontres d'Arles - II

Giovanni Maggiora — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 08:07:02 +0000

The Rencontres would not have been as interesting as they were if I had not had great company. The group of talented artists working at Reminders Photography Stronghold in Tokyo under the leadership of Yumi Goto was in town en masse. I loved the energy they produced together and admired their book projects, one more interesting and innovative than the other. It was good to share a beer or two, and to cook some pasta for some of them one evening!

My special thanks in particular to Hiroshi Okamoto and Mayumi Suzuki who first welcomed me to the Gallery in Tokyo (with Keiji Fujimoto) and then to the happy crowd in Arles. A fond "see you soon again" to Michiko Hayashi, Taro Karibe, Hajime Kimura, Kenji Chiga, Kazuma Obara and Chloe Jafé, the honorary Japanese in the group...

Hiroshi, Hajime, Kenji, Mayumi and Michiko

Rencontres d'Arles - I

Giovanni Maggiora — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 14:22:24 +0000

Countless exhibitions, some absolutely outstanding, above all the retrospective on Anne Leibovitz's early work for Rolling Stone magazine, a flood of BW images from the 60s and 70s shown floor to ceiling in a perfect grid continuum of raw-paper prints; a perfect counterpoint to her evening speech at the Theâtre Antique on July 6, focused on her more recent portrait work. But also Joel Meyerowitz's color work and Jacob Aue Sobol's prints matching his latest book, "With and Without You"; both were hanging around their spaces when I visited, adding the chance of a conversation to the pleasure of seeing their work "for real" rather than in book form. Plus the great work from Masahisa Fukase, the iconic Japanese master; I knew his obsession for ravens, but what a surprise to find him also fixated on his own... cat!

The entire city was a big photo party, this being the Rencontres' opening week with all of the press and publishers and gallerists descending on the normally sleepy town like a swarm of excited bees.... What a week.

Exhibition One

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 18:16:43 +0000

It took the solstice of summer and a major heatwave to get going, but today I took one more step in my learning process about all things photographic: exhibiting my work in real life as opposed to sharing it online.

I must thank the people at Oasys, the professional transition coaching firm in Paris, for having kindly hosted my Japan work today. For two reasons, mainly.

One, Their invitation to showcase my images forced me to finally take the plunge and get into baryta paper output, a medium that I had never to date practiced and is instead a pleasure to work with: creamy, warm highlights, deep blacks, the whole deal. Beats a screen hands down, and in 18"x12" (45x30cm) size, already an expanse of ink that one can get lost in (next, go bigger!).

Two, the day was focused on two live comment sessions, and made me touch in person how an image strikes people's attention much more strongly if it comes with context. In this case, sharing with visitors the impressions and emotions that a month's worth of wanderings and discoveries in Japan left with me. People will still see what they will want to see in the actual images, but they will be much more strongly invested in what they see if they have been primed for it by sharing with them your emotional rationale (sounds like a contradiction in terms; it is not) for choosing your subjects and frames. And in turn, you as the photographer receive a jolt of positive energy that I think I'll find precious in seeking my next images and choosing my next project. (Which may well be a return to Japan, to tell you the truth...)

Great day.

Kabuto

Giovanni Maggiora — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 13:59:22 +0000

Kabuto is a samurai helmet, and indeed Kabuto-san in Shinjuku's Yakitori Alley is a warrior — of the charcoal grill. And not any grill, because (as he famously hurried to make me realize, pointing at an ink brush painting on a wall of his grill shack) he will only grill one thing: うなぎ, that is unagi, the mythical Japanese delicacy, freshwater eel.

I love the way the Japanese are so single-mindedly focused on their skills, to the point of never thinking there is a limit to how much one can learn by practicing the same gestures, movements, techniques, day in, day out through an entire life. If you know eel, you cannot know chicken too. Both have countless cuts, each with its own texture and grilling requirements. In the half hour I spent with Kabuto-san I've tasted at least six different ell parts, all different, all equally delicious.

Just don't ask about the gooey, tar-like sauce he was dipping the skewers in before one last minute on the grill. Felt like it has been simmering there since the beginning of time... Also o not ask about Kabuto-san's assistant, who at probably over 40 is still just barely allowed to get anywhere near the grill; being an apprentice in Japan requires endless love and self-sacrifice...

Inspired Eye Magazine, Issue 46

Giovanni Maggiora — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 07:00:56 +0000

Olivier Duong and Don Springer, editors of Inspired Eye Magazine (https://www.theinspiredeye.net/street-photography-magazine/) and great teachers who helped me improve my game, have been kind in selecting my Japan work for publication on issue #46 of IEM. You'll find the piece at page 124.

Full text of my interview below the break here.

Inspired Traveler: I like this tagline because it embodies in many ways my own approach to life and photography.

A Traveler is the furthest thing that exists compared to a Tourist. Traveling implies slow discovery, impregnating oneself of a different culture, respecting it and trying to understand it from the inside. The best way to travel, actually, is to go live someplace, breath the air day in day out. Give me fewer hotels, and more homes, I will be happy.

Photography is, for me, the same: the tool to root myself to a place, to try and make it mine, to capture its atmosphere as it resonates with me, to get closer to the people that make it different from all others. Slow and deliberate, again. I am much happier photographing the city that I live in than one that I’m visiting in a hurry.

Earlier this year, I found myself in the lucky position to be able to apply this philosophy in a different way, to a place and culture which for some time had been tugging at me, triggering first curiosity, then fascination and finally the urgency to explore it in depth: Japan.

No, I did not move to Japan altogether, but I spent an entire month there, determined to discover it at the slowest pace possible, one day and many walking hours at a time. After a first week with my wife, the rest of the time I was entirely on my own, with my cameras and Japan itself as my only company. From the “home” base of a minimalist Tokyo apartment, I set out every morning to meet the Japanese as much as possible on their terms.

I had created over the preceding year a few personal contacts that I must thank for helping me glimpse aspects of the culture that I would otherwise have missed, and sharing with me some welcome company and deeper human contact from time to time.

I had prepared myself setting up some reference points for my daily wanderings in each neighborhood (the odd shrine and temple, but also photography bookstores and food joints…). A kind of bucket list that ensured some structure to my days.

Other than that, however, I was otherwise completely open to whatever came my way, following the tip of my nose through train stations and around alley corners and into ramen bars, watching people go about their daily lives.

It was exhilarating to be totally focused on sucking everything in, enjoying every moment and discovery. In this, I was helped by a culture that pays attention to small details and values focus, silence and emptiness even in the midst of apparent chaos.

In spite of the obvious language barrier, the Japanese made me feel welcome, perhaps more so because I was showing my hosts more than superficial curiosity but a real intent to appreciate and understand them.

I don’t believe for one moment that I have ‘cracked the code’ of such an incredibly unique people, but I did my best to try. I came back a little different, certainly richer personally.

My cameras were a precious tool in this full immersion exercise. I shot over 6000 frames, over 200 per day: what I normally shoot in more than a couple of years. I learnt a few lessons in the process.

One, photography is an essentially lonely activity: it requires full attention, not quite compatible with travel companions. But it can also be a way to reach out to people, initiating many a conversation with strangers in the street and sharing experiences with the fellow photographers I had the chance to meet in person in Tokyo.

Two, full focus also requires a conscious effort to limit technical distractions. I left for Tokyo with two lenses only: my now-preferred 28mm and its complement on the longer end, a 50mm, each permanently glued to my two Leica bodies. Crowds with one, details with the other. I also brought a Ricoh GR as a backup for those times I wanted to feel lighter, but it is another 28mm perspective anyways. Framing became instinctive, with no second thoughts, and the project has gained in visual consistency.

Three, we really shoot what we are, and certain themes are powerfully recurring in our work no matter where we exercise it. After the first week, when I was overwhelmed by the visual novelty of a radically different country, I slowly started filtering that noise out and unconsciously getting back to the subjects I am attracted to and the framing habits I have when I shoot at home in Paris. I should actually make a project out of that: “parallel cities”.

Four, the real challenge in any photographic project comes after one’s return home: editing the work to a digestible core. It was relatively easy to filter it down from 6000 to 350 decent images, the ones that I spent time post-processing in Lightroom and SilverEfex. Going beyond that, to the less than 60 I have published in my website’s galleries and then to the smaller set that Olivier is featuring here on Inspired Eye, was quite another challenge. It requires a lot of “letting go”, some distance from the emotion of immediate memories; it took me three months and the feedback of many a photographer friend. It’s hard to kill your babies!

Finally, even in our digital world, photography is not complete if it does not end up in print. Yes, showing images online is fine, but the emotion of seeing them in large format on proper baryta paper, well, there is just no comparison to a screen. Rediscover paper, you will feel a lot more satisfaction about your images, as you give them the respect that they deserve.

A friend on Flickr recently told me that the images I brought back from Japan go beyond the easy clichés and show a lot of respect for my subjects. Reading her comment made me realize I have perhaps achieved something: transmitting to her, and perhaps to you, the reader of my images, the approach I have had to this precious experience and the love I discovered for “my Japan”. I will be back for more, I’m sure.

Counters

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 06:47:35 +0000

I have always loved eating at the counter in American diners, but the Japanese have elevated the practice to an art form.

Very packed, most of the time. Which makes for interesting encounters and many a conversation (in some form of Google Transate-aided, broken English and Japanese).

Shinjuku, Tokyo

Traces

Giovanni Maggiora — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 09:51:30 +0000

If you look, you will see. Slow down, and you will see more. Your camera is your tether to the present moment, to flowing life and to traces of lives not seen.

Politics

Giovanni Maggiora — Tue, 23 May 2017 14:13:44 +0000

We sure can't say we have not lived through an eventful political spring, here in Paris. The city walls carry a sometimes tattered witness to the heat of ideological battles past and present.

Somebody, in the end, emerged victorious. Vive la démocratie...

My Lightroom Workflow

Giovanni Maggiora — Sun, 21 May 2017 12:21:12 +0000

If you are a Lightroom user, you have surely developed your own way to work through your images and organize them on your disks and catalogs. There is no truth here, just what works for you. But maybe you are frustrated and are looking for ideas to mold into your own system. I’m happy to share a few.

I will try to walk you throw my own workflow, adapted from ideas I have evolved from others. Time to “pay forward”! It seems to be working for me, and has evolved over the last couple of years as I met new challenges.

"Working" means: it keeps me reasonably tidy in the process. It can be perfected, especially in forcing greater discipline in the metadata tags addition, titling etc., but by and large, it does the job.

The fundamental idea is to try and spend as little time as possible in Folders, which I treat as good old three-ring binders for filmstrip holders! I use, instead, quite heavily, nested Collection Sets and Smart Collections. Treated right, they are really... smart!

Ready for it?

Folder Structure

Simple. Inside my LR Master folder, I have created several Subfolders by year ("M-20yy") and inside those, twelve "M-20yy-mm" Subfolders by month. All images get imported there and not initially renamed nor sorted in any other way.

I also backup my images to a parallel backup folders structure, essentially the same "B-20yy" and "B-20yy-mm" structure for the original RAW files. Redundant maybe, but it has saved me from disaster a couple of times already, allowing me to re-import the images to LR after some screw-up or other. (This is not to replace the global backup process that I use for all of my disks. It’s really belt and suspenders.)

Collections Structure

I make heavy use of nested Collections Sets. I start the system with a master Collection Set for each year, "Work 20yy".

Inside, things diverge from the Folder structure. Rather than going on a month-by-month structure, I create several Collection Sets, by subject or location. For example, a set called "2016 Paris" and one called "2016 Berlin".

Each Collection Set will contain a Collection which will contain all copies and virtual copies of images on that subject (say, "2013 Paris All"), plus a few smart collections. More on these in a second.

Most important, though, is another master Collection Set called "Work in Progress". Nothing goes to other Collection Sets before it's handled end-to-end here.

The WIP set contains a set called "WiP-All", where all copies and virtual copies of the images that need processing reside.

It also contains several Smart Collections, which are set to automatically sort by Copy Name all copies of images in the Wip All set. My Copy Names are "Original", "BW Basic", "BW Processed" If you do color, they'd probably be called "Color Basic" and "Color in Process".

In order to track images that deserve processing but I have not worked on yet, I assign the Purple Flag to these, and they will be ready for processing in another "WiP to be Processed" Smart Collection that will select from Copy Name = "Processed" plus Color Flag = Purple.

I have started using SilverEfex a couple of years ago, so there is now a final “SilverFX” smart collection where the output JPGs created with the plug-in will be found. More on SilverEfex later on, as it adds some complexity to the workflow, distracting from the basics.

Workflow

Import

Import first, of course.

First I copy the card images to the backup folder of the month, so "B-20yy-mm". You can do duplicates on import via Lightroom too, but I find this to be quicker and less error-prone.

Then I import via Lightroom to the current "M 20yy-mm" Folder, without renaming but converting the proprietary RAWs to DNG.

So I end up with the RAW originals in the backup tree and DNGs in the Lightroom master tree. Upon import, I normally assign very basic metadata tags, normally camera name and location data (this can be done later too, but get it out of the way now).

No work will ever be done in folders!

Move to Work in Progress

Take the last import and do two things:

- Rename using a sequential structure such as "M-20yy-mm-xxxx". Renaming post import preserves the original filename in the library, which can be useful for 'reconciling' to the backups which are never renamed. You may prefer to rename everything upfront, backups included, but I like to keep a link to the as-shot filenames.

- Move the whole series to the "WiP All" collection, and apply to all images the Copy Name : "Original". You should immediately see them populate the "WiP Original" smart folder.

Ideally, you should not touch Originals at all, but I confess to cheating occasionally and running through them to spot immediate rejects and/or correct blatant exposure issues using the quick develop cursors. This can save otherwise good images from rejection later. Editing has to wait for now!

Create Virtual Copies

So, now, stay within your WiP All set and do yourself a favor. Immediately

• create Virtual copies of all images and as soon as they are created and are all selected, type in a new copy name, either "Color Basic" or in my case normally, "BW Basic". This allows you to always quickly go back to an original image with no processing applied, and floow an alternative processing path on a different Virtual Copy.

• apply your favorite standard processing preset to your Basic copies, pushing contrast a bit etc.. This is especially important for BW images, to avoid being “distracted” by colors as early as possible in the process. Never look at color Originals again!

At this stage you should see your "BW Basic" folder nicely populated with your first set of BW images. Time to get to the real work!

First edit

The BW Basic folder is not yet a post-processing area. You don't want to invest time in postprocessing everything. It's more like a first editing area. You are allowed to cheat a bit again while you are editing, but don't overdo it. Just correct basic exposure parameters, if needed.

So, now, use that Pick flag to do your first cull. Walk through the BW Basic smart collection aiming to keep no more than 25-33% of your images. You are allowed some leniency here because you have not yet properly adjusted for contrast etc. Just focus on composition and subject strength at this stage.

Move to Processing

Time for the big guns.

Apply a filter for Pick Flags in you BW Basic smart collection. Select all picks. Move to the WiP All collection (all selected picks should stay selected), and create virtual copies again.

The reason why you want to move to a collection and not create virtual copies from the smart collection is that your copies will be automatically named "Copy 2", and drop out of the virtual collection; you can only find them in your basic Folder and need to drag them again in WiP-All....

With virtual copies still all selected, rename the copy from "Copy 2" to "BW Processed" and also apply a Purple Flag.

At this stage, your picks should show up in the BW To Be Processed smart collection inside the Work in Process set. If you will, apply a few more metadata keywords, to allow future sorting by keyword. Most times, I wait for the next edit to do this, but it’s true that the more keywords, the better.

Now, work through the To Be Processed smart collection and do what it takes processing wise. Use you own presets, mostly focus on contrast clarity and your favorite amount of vignetting and/or grain, tweak color filtering options as needed. It's your recipe, I won't go there. Don’t aim for perfection, there are too many images at this stage, you’d be wasting your time. You can process further after the next step).

Let the images simmer a little while, ideally overnight...

Another editing and processing round

Now that you are happy with your first round of results, time to apply tough love to your work, and edit again. Pick flags have already been used, so now move to stars. Start with a single star. Again, try and aim for 25-33% keep rate only, so that you are going to have one-stars only on 6 to 10% of your shoot.

Apply a filter for one-stars, so that the only images showing are your strongest from the shoot. Now you have a smaller number of them to spend some more processing time on, so go ahead and tweak the development a bit more if you will. Most times, the least the better!

More importantly, now it's the time to do the most vital bit, which is to finish the labeling metadata thing, and to add titles and captions. With fewer images, this will not be a chore!

Of course, you may always want to revisit old "finals" and try alternative takes. Remember however not to keep tweaking the "first final". Much better to start anew with a fresh virtual copy, best if from your Basic virtual copy so that you avoid layering similar development actions onto each other. Just remember to call the new processed copy with a sequential numeral. It will still work in the automatic smart folder sequence.

Done, almost

You are now done! You can proceed to clearing the purple labels, and your images will be lodged nice and clean in the "BW Processed" smart folder. Just remember that the really good and fully processed ones are just the ones with one star: these are you “real” babies.

Moving out of Work-In-Progress

Time to clean up and leave an empty desk for the next batch. So, simply, go to the WiP All collection in the Work in progress set, and move all images to the appropriate master collection, say to my "2013 Paris All" collection in the "2013 Paris" Collection Set. If you have created the same smart folders for original, Basic and Processed in that collection set, the relevant smart collections will populate automatically.

Other smart collections

Don't stop using smart collections once you start.

For example, I use a "Best of" smart collection to automatically pick all images with Pick Flags plus One Stars in a given year. Useful starting point when you decide, at some point, to go one step further in your editing and give two stars to the best one stars and so on...

Export

From here, therefore, apply the star filter again just to be sure that you are working on the “good” images, and Export to JPEGs for uploading to your website or distribute otherwise. The export can be done to the same folder as the original RAW image, or to a separate Output folder structure. You decide.

If you use Lightroom’s publishing tools, you can normally upload directly from the application, for example to Flickr, without creating dedicated JPGs, which keeps your hard drives lighter.

I also label everything that has been uploaded to my Flickr page with a blue label, as an easy reminder from within Lightroom itself: alternatively, you can add a “Published_to_Flickr” keyword to the metadata of the image.

External processing engines – Silver Efex

My personal postprocessing flow relies heavily on Lightroom’s powerful features, but I have never been a fan of LR’s grain engine. Grain is an essential aspect of the film-like style I like to give to my BW images, and LR is less then ideally suited for it, with grain which is closer to digital noise than to actual sliver-halide behavior.

Bring in Silver Efex, the extremely powerful postprocessing tool now owned by Google and freely available for download (thank you, Google, you are nice for once). While I have not yet decided to fully “decamp” to SE for my entire processing flow, I am now using it to give a “final pass” to the images already processed in LR.

SE requires creating heavy TIFF files if you want to maintain track of the full history of the adjustments you apply, but for the moment I’m going minimalist, using essentially one of the SE presents customized to add Tri-X-style grain to the final image. I then output directly to a full-size JPG that goes back to the LR catalog, sitting in a dedicated SilverFX folder structure and with a “SilverFX” copy name assigned to the image. The file will inherit all of the DNG metadata you had assigned originally, and will sit in the same Collection Set as the original image, to be picked up in the “SilverFX” Smart Collection I have created.

To all intents and purposes, the SilverFX folders and the smart collections with the same name contain today my “best of” work, and are the basis for all of my exporting, publishing and printing activity.

ooo

That’s it. This workflow is longer to explain than to actually use. It provides some discipline to your work, and if handled respecting the sequence and not seeking shortcuts, it will provide you with a catalog of images where you will always know what is where.

If you have questions, I’ll be happy to respond and help you adapt your own workflow to at least some of the tips and tricks I’ve found useful for my own work.

Parisian Kids

Giovanni Maggiora — Thu, 18 May 2017 21:03:40 +0000

I wish I could look at this city with their eyes. God knows which photos I would then shoot.

Ravens

Giovanni Maggiora — Wed, 17 May 2017 10:35:18 +0000

Masahisa Fukase (深瀬昌久) first published his masterpiece, Ravens (鴉, Karasu) in 1986. We are lucky that MACK had just published a new edition. Haunting, mesmerizing.

My own ravens are hopefully less dark than Fukase's. Still, birds are incredible beasts. They are urban citizens just as much as we are.

Ikebukuro, Tokyo

These other guys are French, instead...

Paris, mineral city

Giovanni Maggiora — Wed, 17 May 2017 00:24:33 +0000

It's been a while now since my return from Japan. It was not easy to readjust, both mentally and visually. But some work is now emerging from the Lightroom catalog. Bits and pieces to share here...

This little set is just to remind myself of the mineral nature of the city, as man keeps making it.

Rue de Beauce, Paris III