The Liberation Day in Milan

April 25 is an important day and a national holiday in Italy, marking the end of WWII, the fall of the Fascist regime and the liberation from German troops that still occupied much of Northern Italy in the final days of the war. This event is considered particularly important in Milan, which was the place where the final insurrection against …

Photographing Sicily, Part I

Sicily is arguably the Italian region with the most varied historical past. Over the centuries, it was ruled by Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, French, Spaniards, and Austrians, before becoming part of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and finally Italy, after the unification of the country in 1861. All of those dominations left indelible traces in the region’s …

Music as a Metaphor for Photography

They say you can’t teach an old pony new tricks, but I don’t believe that’s true. Personally, in the last couple years, I’ve learned to dance, some Japanese, and how to develop film. Recently, I also decided to start learning to play the piano. To give you a bit of background, you have to know that I never studied music …

Rediscovering Italy: a Road Trip Travelogue

What do you do when travel abroad is severely restricted during a global pandemic? One thing you can still do, in most cases, is to travel around your own country, and this is what I did this year. Instead of taking one or more trips abroad, as I usually do every year, I decided to embark on a two-week road …

Odle / Geisler, Dolomites

A Hike To The Seceda

The name Seceda denotes the westernmost peak along the ridgeline that divides the Val Gardena (Gröden) from the Val di Funes (Villnoßtal) and that culminates with the Odle (Geisler) mountains, part of the Puez-Odle group in the Dolomites. On the southern side, this ridge degrades gently with green lawns dotted with mountain huts, but on the northern side it drops …

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic

The Lightroom Catalog: Storage Considerations

This is the second article in my series about the Adobe Ligthroom catalog. You can find the previous articles here: The Lightroom Catalog: the Basics Where Should You Store Your Catalogs? One of the questions about the Lightroom catalog I get asked most frequently is certainly: Where do I store my catalog? In order to answer this question, I will …

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic

The Lightroom Catalog: the Basics

Many people who are using Adobe Lightroom are confused about the concept of a catalog and have many questions about it. I keep getting questions myself, so I thought I’d write a series of articles to hopefully provide some answers and demystify some of its most obscure features and confusing aspects. Lightroom vs. Lightroom Classic What follows is relevant to …

A First Taste of Japan in the Fall

I think I might be developing a serious case of Mal d’Asie, not unlike those who have visited Africa and can’t get rid of a feeling of nostalgia and longing desire to go back there, called Mal d’Afrique. In recent years I’ve traveled to the UAE, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, and just few months ago to Japan as well. …