If you prefer a video version, just watch it here, but if you prefer to read go on.

I’m really glad in January 2020, before the shit hit the fan badly, I decided to start my Black and White Tales project. It was a great way to keep myself busy and stay in touch with the world and my creative mind while we entered the Covid jail we still have to leave!

That project taught me a lot about myself and my photographic style and preferences. I got even more involved with film thanks to the images I found in my archive and really loved.

If you followed the projects from the beginning I owe you a big thank you. If you did not just click here and enjoy it. If you do not click and check it out nothing will happen to you but you will make me sad and that will perhaps heavily influence your Karma!

Another success of 2020 was the publication of my book about fine art ink-jet printing. It is the English version of the one I published few years ago in Italian and contains some obvious updates. Check it out.

The Black and White Spider Award is one of my favorite awards, it always have so many beautiful photographs submitted and very high standards. I had three images nominated, one in the Fine Art category and two in the People category. Not bad at all.

Photography for me is always a great way to meet new people and hear new stories.

In 2009 while photographing Ginseng farmers I took a picture of Abe Vang, a Hmong farmer who was a refugee from Laos and passed away recently. I always loved that picture because I felt a connection with Abraham also if we spoke for few minutes.

Craig Thompson, a comic book designer contacted me to use the picture for the issue about Abe Vang of his comics series dedicated to Wisconsin ginseng farming. It was great to learn Abe’s story and create a new connection.

Even in a shitty year I manage to have satisfactions from my job! Not bad.

Now the projects for 2021.

First of all I will take a break until the end of January, to organize myself and to relax a little.

I have no idea what the year will bring, but the beginning already brought a lot of censorship on social media so I will start to upload my video also on Rumble and move away from FaceBook and other traditional social media. You can find me on MeWe, if you like to stay in touch.

Photographically I intend to produce 10 magazines and 10 fine art portfolios, about 10 different places. I will continue to make videos and talk about the pictures involved in the project… Rumble or Youtube I will find a way also if I expect some censorship due to my libertarian ideas I have no problem to express.

I will also continue the Gear Talk series, so expect more reviews of old film cameras!

It is all for now, stay tuned and see you at the end of the month.

Calm down your expectations… I will not tell here in public the personal aspects of my life and all my sins, but only the photographic part!
Anyway… Santa was pretty good with me so I think I didn’t do too bad also on the non photographic aspects of my life.

In a year a lot changed. I had some plans I had to postpone for reasons out of my control, but despite all I managed to do something I’m proud of. Steps toward my goals and great professional satisfactions.

I took some pictures that really satisfy me, even after months, reaching the end of the year, I look at them and I feel the same emotions I felt taking them.

First of all I had the opportunity to discover Levico, a city with thermal springs known from the ancient times. I knew it in name because my great grandparents were used to go there in the 1930s to take care of my great grandfather diabetes and have some vacation. At that time 500 kilometers were not an easy trip and they did it usually with train and at least once with a Fiat Balilla.

The town of Levico had another important aspect in my family life. My great grandparents met there a priest teaching in the Archiepiscopal Residential School of Desio. A great school under cardinal Schuster, Bishop of Milan, one of the greatest person we had in Italy. Thanks to that casual encounter my father went to that school and learned not only what helped him to graduate and have a wonderful career, but also the deep ethic and honesty he was able to transmit to me.

When I had an opportunity to travel in the area to visit relatives of my girlfriend I wanted to see the city that I heard mentioned in many family histories and influenced my family life.

I obviously had my trusted cameras with me and I have some pictures I particularly like. Taken on the shore of the Caldonazzo Lake with my Pentax 67.

It was a day of relax, a slow walk on the lake and just observing. Only ten pictures, lazily taken without even pulling the exposure meter out of the bag but just trusting the old sunny 16 rule, the rule printed on all the old film boxes saying to use 1/ISO as shutter speed at f16 in a sunny day. It was a nice sunny day, I did not even had the need to compensate.

The nice part was to discover how much I appreciated to have a limited quantity of pictures available. Only ten, I did not want to use more than a roll of film. That gave me the calm to study the scene before I pressed the shutter. I observed the light, how it interacted with the landscape and I observed the movement of the people. I observed for long time before I brought the camera to my eyes, composed, waited for every person to be in the right position and finally clicked. Something I always did with film, but I with digital I fell in the bad habit to click too much and think too less.

Every person in the image is exactly where I wanted them. A real moment fixed in time. The two sexy girls lying seductively in front of the lifeguard, husband and wife communicating with a short contact of his feet on her ass, 20 years of comprehension, kids playing happily and everyone enjoying a summer day by the water.

I went back again months later and I completed my photographic journey, but it will become an article and I will not anticipate it here. I just say I really loved Levico.

Something else I was very proud this year was to win an honorable mention at the B&W Spider awards. The picture was taken with my infrared converted Fuji X-Pro1 during a day of urbex. No sorry, I hate the term “urbex”, actually it was well organized industrial archaeology in a dismissed military base. A day spent with a colleague to complete the work we did years before to document the industrial archaeology in the area, it can be seen in a book you can buy here. A day with a friend who stationed there for years and told us a lot of stories and anecdotes about the base and his life. A wonderful day of friendship and photography.

I was very fond of that image. I loved the emptiness and the asymmetry of the room. The image was submitted earlier to the PPA contest and did not even got a merit, but it received an honorable mention at the Spider Award and that really was great.

I’m photographically getting far away from the over photoshopped trend that is now dominating some contests and to discover there are contests and judges that still recognize my style was a fantastic confirmation of my choice to be artistically faithful to myself.

There was another vacation I took. I went to Giulianova, a very nice harbor town in the Abruzzo region on the Adriatic sea. It was another closure of a circle, something I really needed this year.
I went to Giulianova on vacation with my parents for 27 years, since I was a kid, and I wanted to revisit it and put back in my mind some good memories to take off my brain the memories of their last days on earth.

It worked great for me. I found not only the memories I was looking for but also, unchanged, the beautiful heart of the people living in Abruzzo.

I had started my photographic journey as a kid, exploring with my first camera the harbor in Giulianova and I decided to dedicate a small photographic project to it.

The images and an article I wrote about the Giulianova Harbor, ended on the pages of FujiLove Magazine and you can see the article here and the portfolio with all the images here on my website.

The best part of it was to see the article shared by many media in the Abruzzo region and have it appreciated also for how it showed to the world a wonderful and underrated Italian region. I was able to give back to Giulianova a little, my way to say thank you for the good memories and moments the town offered to me in the years. Another satisfaction was to publish my first novel, Lasting Photographs. It was a nice challenge to pause from technical books and write a novel. Still the main subject are photographs but inside an adventure and romance through some continents and almost a century.

It was a year with good images, great food and a lot of great moments full of love I shared with my life partner. It was a good year and those moments gave me the force to go on and continue to work toward my goals despite the setbacks I had to deal with. It was a great year to heal from the loss of my parents and start to create my own memories. I learned a lot, personally and professionally and I met some great people and made new friends. A very good year.

Now it’s time to write down my good intentions for the next year and work even harder to reach my goals and realize my dreams.

A very nice project for 2020 is coming next week. Stay tuned and enjoy your New Year’s Eve. May 2020 be the greatest year of your life.

(Click on the image to open a large version)

…I woke up sweating from the nightmare, I was sitting on my couch and I immersed myself in my beloved reality.

Some years the Christmas reality is happier than the others, this year for me some sadness is in the air filling everything with the emptiness left by the people I loved and are no more with me. But still all is real and I will never change it with a fake safe zone. I love reality because I know I can rationally deal with it and I can follow some little Christmas rituals, as setup a family traditional stone carved Nativity, to still feel the presence of the persons who gave me my life and helped me to become who I’m today.

Christmas is the moment to forget the sadness and get ready to reborn being in charge of our own life. It is the moment to find the joy in everything around us and start planning the future with the blessing of the days getting longer.

Christmas is the moment to realize our uniqueness is the most important gift we have, and no matter what the other people will think, is time to appreciate it and to let it grow.
No matter if your uniqueness is a red nose or anything else, there will always be people joking about it and sometime their jokes are essential to realize what is that differentiate us from the others.

Christmas is the moment to ask for gifts, and start to work to deserve them, so we can transform a red nose from a joke to an essential skill to make the world a better place.

Christmas is the time to look at the others with understanding, it is the time to see the good in the people and their good intentions. It’s time to quit to confuse romantic approaches and harassment.

Christmas is the time for joy working all together for a better world and possibly forget bureaucracy if just for a week.

Christmas is also the time to evaluate the year and distinguish who had been nice and who had been naughty. It is time to do it looking at the reality of an year that went by, with the good and the bad moments, and the good at the bad people we found on our path.

Christmas is the time to give gifts and to give coal, and check it twice to understand who really deserves it, it’s the time to make peace with the year that is almost gone and get our minds ready for a new year to be lived at fullest.

May this Christmas bring you joy and the New Year the realization of your dreams.

The 2017 was a peculiar year. I took a sabbatical from my work, I had the option to put myself in a situation where I had to work 16 hours a day to make a sufficient gross to have, after the italian 85% taxes (35% income, 22% V.A.T. and 27.7% mandatory state managed retirement plan) enough to pay for someone taking care of my 91 years old father, or I could just do it personally and avoid to work 85% of my time for the government.
The choice was a no-brainer: I took time for myself and gave back the care I received all my life.

Professionally I consider this a great year. With the few time I had for myself I managed to write some books with very good reviews and realize some personal projects.

To be far from the pressure of the profession I reignited my love for photography and had the time to think and develop new ideas.

January started with a beautiful review of the book “Pensieri Fotografici”, a collection of philosophical, political incorrect and ethical thoughts about photography. The book is in italian because is really specific for the situation of photography and the italian policies.

More I think about photography and the direction photography has taken with the infinite possibilities of digital manipulation, more I find myself attracted to the past: simple analogue photography.

Pinhole photography is the most basic form of photographic expression we can imagine. I did not had the time to go out and test some new pinhole camera but I finally had the time to scan some old films made with a pinhole. I realized how much I need to clear my mind from the digital habits. When I was much younger I had the option to choose a career coding software, I choose to not follow it because computer were alienating me from real life. It was not for me. I think for the same reasons I like to get away from digital photography and computer screens. Don’t get me wrong, I like digital and all the opportunities that give us, but I simply like to feel connected to my analogue soul and roots once in while.

2017 for me was also a big change in my digital equipment. I sold all my Canon and switched to Fuji. I really like the X-Pro2, the optical viewfinder is perfect for me and the simplicity of the dials with the old school style is exactly what I needed. I hate to have to go thru menus to do simple things as a change of ISO.
The quality of the lenses is exceptional at a much lower cost than the previous Canon lens I owned, so after a year with both systems I went all Fuji. The only Canon lens I miss is the 17mm TS-E. I hope someone will design a TS lens for Fuji x!

A tool can really change the way we photograph, in this case I started to bring the camera with me always (also the X-Pro1 I converted to infrared) and take pictures in the few moments of free time I have.

Rolling Clouds

Thanks to the Fuji always with me I was able to put together the book “Bovisium Infrarubra”. A collection of images in infrared of the town I’m living in. I not only had very good reviews of the book but I also had an article posted on FujiLove about the project.

With the IR images I also got nominations at the B&W spider award for all the 5 pictures I submitted. Not bad at all!

Some satisfaction came also from a merit in the PPA International Print Competition… but personally I feel I’m getting more and more distant from the painted/retouched/elaborated pictures that are becoming so common in the contests, specially in the PPA IPC. It is a personal taste so I do not judge the choices, I simply feel distant and not really stimulated to submit my images.
Another advantage of  sabbatical time: I do not need to care about what is trendy but only about what I like to do. And more I do what I like and more I receive appreciation by potential clients also when I’m not trendy for some contests. It is nice!

The best of the year was a travel to the USA. Wisconsin to do an exhibit at the International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival and Florida, just to relax a couple of weeks and visit friends. It was 5 years since the last time I was in the USA and I felt home more than ever. I really loved that.

Traveling is my passion, and USA is even a greater passion. The first break I had since my mother passed away in 2015, I really was in need for it and I was in need to feel again at home in what I consider my spiritual homeland.

The year is ended 30 minutes ago and my father is not getting younger, so my free time is less and less but I can still dedicate some hours to a book I’m writing, to a personal project I hope to finish for the beginning of 2018 started with and old Pentax Spotmatic I bought and repaired and a photography book about an old army base.

I was worried 2017 was going to keep me away from my profession and passion but actually it gave me time and inspiration enough to keep myself at the top as photographer. I’m proud of myself!

I will see what the 2018 will bring, for now I’m forced to live day by day, if not hour by hour, so my only resolution is to keep to give back the love I received all my life and use all the available time to do as much photographic projects as I can.

I do not know what I will be able to do, but for sure I have time to review my archive and finally print some images. The idea is to print a couple of images a week… It was my idea of a challenge for 2018, priorities and time available have drastically changed in the last few weeks, so I will not challenge myself but simply do my best to try arrive at 100 prints for the end of 2018, if I will not be able to do it no worries, give back the love I received all my life is much more important than anything else for me now.

So, Happy New Year to all of you.

Here my cards from 1995 to 2016 with the explanation of what I did, how and why.

Obviously my wishes for this year are at the bottom of the post… so if you want a nice year… read it all!!!

1995

This was my first year as professional. I opened my studio in July 1994 and I started to really work and promote myself in 1995.
I always had a passion for reconstructing ambiences and mood so also for Christmas I went in that direction and realized a model of a mountain lodge.

It was all made in 4″x5″ film with a Cambo Master Plus. I printed the picture to attach to the card in 4″x5″ and you can see here under the black shade the original image and, clear, the crop I used. The reason to realize a larger image and then crop was to have more depth of field and to save money, it was cheaper for my lab to print a larger image and for me to cut it at the right size… I still do not understand why but probably enlarging was a more standard process than a contact print.

The background out of the window is an Ansel Adams picture, it was my way to give homage to an absolute master.

1996

One of my preferred artists has always been M.C. Escher and I was fascinated by the optical illusions and the impossible 3D structures, it was a good challenge to create a picture with one in it.

The image is a double exposure on a 4″x5″ film, one exposure for the main image, impossible structure included and one for the bubbles for the fishes.
To realize the impossible structure was not so difficult, just a work of precision to position the camera and to smooth with a file one of the wood beam to fake the perspective. Who guess where the structure is in reality open wins! (Just the glory, don’t ask for money!! )
The bubbles were the complex part. I had to draw on the focusing screen the exact spots of the fishes mouths, then in a tank I piped hypodermic needles to a can of compress air. The light on the bubbles had to be very large and bright so I had to mask everything but the bubbles with a cut cardboard in front of the lens.
When I made the pictures I realized that a problem was the film moving a little in the film holder. I knew Sinar had very beautiful and expensive film holders that kept the film precise in position, but there was no time to order them, so luckily I saved some money simply inserting some small pieces of rubber from an old bicycle wheel pipe in my film holders. I had no more problems of moving films since then.

That year I decided to expand the list of recipients and send the card also to some potential clients, an Italian photographers association promised me the list addresses but, with the usual efficiency of Italians, the list arrived after the 6th of January, well after Christmas.
I decided to send the card anyway, with an explanation of the delay and an image with the status of the picture a month later.

1997

1997 was the year when the first NASA rover landed on Mars. I though it was fun to let the Mars Pathfinder find a Christmas tree!

The image of the planet with the tree was a model, the sky and the Earth a double exposure on the 4″x5″ film and the Mars Pathfinder was added digitally. Remember this was well before digital so the film needed to be scanned and after inserting the Pathfinder the file was printed on a negative used to make the final prints. It was a mess, the lab was not really ready but at the end we succeeded!

1998

Escher is back. A simple exercise of style, probably the Christmas card I’m less happy with, but was a good exercise to realize the image that made me win the first prize $7,000 at the Schneider Optics photo contest that year. The room and the concept remained the same but the elements changed.

The image is a single exposure on 4″x5″ film with my usual Cambo Master Plus and obviously Schneider lenses, I suppose the 75mm in this case but I really don’t remember after all this years.

1999

While the world was paranoid about the Millennium Bug I was sure my studio was Y2K compliant, my systems were all running on Linux!

I decided to dedicate the Christmas card to the Millennium Bug. The image is a single exposure on a 4″x5″ film and the image on the focusing screen of the Linhof Master Technika (I was using the Cambo for the picture so as subject I decided to use the Linhof, less precise in studio but I loved it for field work) is a positive film attached behind the screen a illuminated with a small flash inside the Linhof.

2000

The Millennium started for me in a good way: a new 4000 sqf studio.

I used the Christmas card to communicate the change of address and brag about the new studio. Nothing better than Santa Claus using his truck to let me find the new studio under the tree.

The picture is a single exposure on a 4″x5″ film, the most difficult part was to realize the truck lights since I had to attach fiber optics that arrived from below the set and came out in the right places in the truck. To have the right color I filtered the fiber optics on the source, it was easy to work under the table than over it in a small size model truck with the snow moving around…

2001

Escher is back again, this time with spherical reflections.

In 2001 I made the card with an advertising agency I was working with and the studio in all its size become the subject. Many days of realization of all the details reflected in the Christmas ornament and a single exposure on my usual 4″x5″ Fuji Provia (I loved that film!).

Something to note is another ornament suspended over the main one and creating an infinite reflection with Merry Christmas wrote in runes… yes I read all the Tolkien books before they were trendy thanks to the movies!

2002

The logo of my company had a redesign in 2002 so it became the subject at the center of the Christmas picture.

Again the image was on a Fuji Provia 4″x5″ with a single exposure and the black and white logo image is on a 4″x5″ Polaroid 55. The Polaroid 55 was an instant black and white film with negative, it was great and I used it many times not only as a test film.

The postcards in the pictures are from my grandfather Luigi Barbano to his fiance`, later wife, and were sent from the front in World World One where he was in the Bersaglieri special forces.

2003

Who does not love lighthouses?

I had the need of a point of reference in my life and profession, some new goal to reach and the lighthouse was a pretty good symbol.

The image is a double exposure, one for the main light with flash and the second for the snow in the glass sphere with continuous light while my assistant under the set was blowing air with an inverted vacuum cleaner to make the snow fly around. I think she still hates me for that today

As usual Fuji Provia 4″x5″ film and Cambo Master Plus with Schneider lens, and I suppose the fantastic 300mm apochromatic.

2004

Reflections again, this time with a digital camera, a Pentax 1*stD or what was that absurd name…

I just liked Edi, my Archimede’s assistant lamp, so I went with Christmas with it. In the reflection you can see me dress as Santa jumping, a board with all the pictures made for the clients that year and other messychristmassy things.

Single exposure and I suppose elaborated in ACR and Photoshop.

2005

2005 was a great year, I wen out of a nightmare relationship that lasted few years and started to be a free happy man and to travel to the USA. I was always looking for people to travel with me but I discovered that traveling alone is one of the greatest experiences.

For Christmas I figured out that the travel could had been a very good subject so I imagined Santa getting ready for the December 26th.

Note the panorama out of the window? Same as 1995, I liked for the ten years to put a reference. This time was not a poster out of the window but digitally inserted.

Digital image, I do not remember if with the Pentax or my first Canon 5D.

2006

This is a little bit far from my usual subjects. I’m not a particularly religious person but in 2006 Italy went crazy with the “respect” for other religions and the word “Christmas” was banned by every company.

I had already realized another picture for Christmas, but after some people started to be an absolute pain in the neck with all the politically correct anti Christmas speeches, and after some of our politicians went on and on with it, I decided I had enough and I went with an absolute Christian nativity scene!

Yes, I’m a kind of a rebel when I see too much stupidity around me, and this was the case.

A lot of other people and companies had my same reaction and so the next year all came back to normal and groups boycotting Christmas disappeared. I was proud of my little revolutionary Christmas card

Digital image, single picture of a print with the statues in front.

2007

2007… the mood in Italy started to go south, the post European crisis arrived at its peak, we had again Romano Prodi as prime minister, the same guy that screwed us with the entrance in the EU. People really felt the crisis, a lot of companies started to close and move out.
Christmas was not a very happy one so I went with it.

Santa Claus having to hitchhike because he gave the reindeer and the sleight to a pawn shop. With the card I also sent the receipt of the pawn shop signed R. Prodowsky.

It was fun. All in digital, the Santa was in studio and inserted on the road image.

2008

2008 was the year of the banks… they really screwed up with the subprime. So why not to bring them coal since they had been really naughty?

The image is in digital, the banks are real cut on cardboard and with Photoshop I only inserted the coal, Santa and illuminated the windows.

I have to say it was probably the most appreciated Christmas picture I ever did, probably everybody had my same feelings that year.

2009

I expanded my horizons in 2009 and opened a base in the USA. Why Clearwater? Simple, I was looking for a studio for sale in Brandon, a city inland and I had imagined to spend there 6 days to evaluate. When I realized that was not what I was looking for I just went west for the sea… after few hours in Clearwater Beach, looking the sunset from Pier 60 I decided I wanted to move there. I’m still working on it but in 2009 all started.

I used the Christmas card to communicate my new base and I liked the contrast of weather!

All digital images I suppose with Canon 5D or Eos 1Ds mkIII

2010

Photography is my passion and became my job, but I really love to fly… so I figured out that Santa Claus needed a flight plan for his big night.

The image is not digitally composed but I built a model of the runway and all the background in studio. I know sometime I think I’m crazy too, but I prefer to build things than to spend hours in post production.

2011

I did not created a Christmas card that year, I was in Ocala, Florida to evaluate a job opportunity. In the meantime I started to take lessons for my private pilot license.

The job option was not what I expected at all (there are some crazy women in the world with a lot of wrong expectations!) but at least I managed to make my first solo before Christmas, and the 25th morning I dressed my Santa hat and went to bring chocolate to the OCF tower.

I have to say it was a great day and I met some great people, and I also lost my fear for the radio

2012

Ops… no card. I had to come back to Italy from my Florida dream for personal reasons and I was just not in the mood… sometime happens!

2013

I was stuck in Italy and I started to work for a company that imports BreathingColor papers and canvas as a consultant and COO.

So Christmas concentrated on paper and went to video.

Some thousand of shots and a lot of work to mount the video, but was a lot of fun…

2014

Another video always connected with BreathingColor.

Other thousands of pictures and some fun…

2015

In January of 2015 I lost my mother, just after the new year day. I’m realizing now that I was probably still not ready to put myself in a positive Christmas mood. It was in some way a sad Christmas so I decided to not share my sadness with the world

2016

Finally we are at this year Christmas. The Christmas spirit is back and I’m optimist more than ever about the future.

The world gave finally a lot of sign of a positive change and new freedom seems to be possible. I decided to celebrate the Christmas with the symbols of what I think is the real meaning of Christmas.

The main message I see from the Christian culture is the revolutionary idea (for that times) that everyone is a son of God and not just few elected people usually in the form of kings and emperors. The christian idea was the base for all the western world idea of freedom, equality and basic rights for all the human kind. I know, not always this idea was interpreted well by a lot of churches, but still was a powerful revolutionary idea.

Freedom for me is a free society with free market and the understanding of the miracle of the capitalist free exchange.

I felt Christmas more in the 30 Celsius Florida weather than in the snowy Italian village on the Alps. To be able to express Christmas and all the good sentiments, we need to be free to have to be free to give and only a free capitalistic society let you be free to have something to give.

The pencil is the symbol for this and if you never read “I, Pencil” by Leonard Read, go to read it and you will understand why I consider it a perfect symbol.

The dollars are the symbol of the realization of the dream of equality and freedom, the symbol of the country of the free.

My letter to Santa is my wish to go back home.

The airplane is part of where I feel home and the joy to be able to pursuit my happiness.

Freedom for a photographer cannot exist without a camera.

The old toy is a toy from my father, probably form the 1930s, and is a symbol of my family and my actual life, giving back to him what he gave me when I grew up.

Technically the picture is one exposure with painted light, Fuji XPro1 with the 55-200 (impressive the sharpness!)

I know that Christmas is different for each one of us and my view of it and the symbols are personal but I think is more important than ever to express ourselves with our art now that there are too many people expressing themselves with trucks on innocent people in Christmas markets.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a fantastic new year full of satisfactions.

Luigi