JENRIKS24hphoetry

Our last guest photographer in 2007 is European – from Italia to be precise. He’s an IT professional but does great photography! Rome seems to be an inspiring city… ;-)

Who are you?

I’m an Italian guy, born in 1976 and living in Rome. After the degree in Computer Science I started to work in an IT company, but since several years my greatest passion has been photography. You can find my works on www.light-opinion.com.

How did you get interested in photography?

I’ve always been fascinated by that old heavy camera used by my father, when I was a child. It was a Miranda, and it was intriguing to me to have to measure the light and rotate gears before shooting. It required you decide about your photo. When that camera become mine, I began my adventure with photography. Some years later I started to use chemicals in a darkroom (in temporary darkened bathroom, actually), and I do still prefer the old and honest b&w photos printed on high-contrast paper.

Are you somehow a trained photographer or rather an autodidact?

I’m an autodidact, and at the beginning I fed my technical curiosity by reading manuals and magazines, and by experimenting with the camera. More knowledge (and fun!) came with the darkroom experience. Later I focused on composition and images language, subjects more difficult to learn, as they only partially concern technical aspects: great part of my interest is still focused in these issues.

Analog or digital?

While digital is the cheaper, faster and definitely the most convenient way to make training, in my opinion analog is the way you learn to respect photography itself. When you are using a film, you know each time you release the shutter some light will enter and modify the photo-sensitive soul of your camera. Physics and chemistry. It charges me with some kind of responsibility, and makes me hold my breathe.

Now I mainly use my digital reflex, but I’m happy to have grown with an analog camera.

Black and white or color?

Before moving to digital I was definitely amazed by the tones on B&W images on photographic paper (and actually I haven’t been able to find those tones in digital any more). I find B&W images stronger, more dramatic and evocative. Anyway, the digital process for color toning and saturation offer new interesting possibilities for color images.

3 photographers you adore.

That’s a very difficult question, as several photographers comes in my mind, each for a different reason. There are masters that one can’t left unmentioned, those you can’t hide from. And there are, on the other hand, young artists present on the Net that inspire me everyday, with their mood and their research of a very personal style. It’s hard to summarize all these so different figures in three names…

What would be the motive of your dreams?

I’m strongly attracted by urban decadent environment and cyberpunk subjects (heavy industrial machines, rusty metal, oxidised wagons, etc.). I’d love to shoot in one of those junkyard full of abandoned wreck, under an heavy sky (but I’m always afraid about hungry dogs or too much suspicious guardians … ;) ).

What inspires you the most when you are taking photos?

Light is in some way always the first actor, but I know I’m also inspired by shapes and regular visive motives. In the last year I’ve been strongly attracted by people in urban environment, and these subjects are more present in my shoots than in the past. Finding and catching the right moment is very challenging and intriguing to me.

Do you have a special ambition with your photography?

May be a very personal one. It’s like a need to create something mine, and to create it using a moment out there. Something that exists by itself but that needs to be seen and caught, and that will never be again. I hope I’ll be able to find a more concrete role for photography in my everyday life, sooner or later.

Marco, thank you very much for answering our questions! We are very happy to have you here as our tenth guest photographer!

I’m very glad and honored to be part of your work here, thank you very much for inviting me. See you again! ;)