One of the exhibits was of paintings by Fernando Botero, an artist I particularly like. The other exhibit was a photographic one: “Magnum America. The United States“.

Looking at the Magnum exhibits I got more pissed at every image. All the show was pure anti-American propaganda. Not a single picture was showing anything positive about the USA. Zero, nada. All of the images with their captions were just 100% propaganda to show the “dark side” of capitalism, free market and free people.

Check out the video if you want to hear the details.

It’s a fact that I have a soft spot for the USA, I love the Founding Fathers and what they created. I don’t pretend to see only the positive aspects of the USA and the free market culture, but there is not a single exhibits in the last years, specially if by Magnum photographers, that is not pure negativity about the USA.

It’s always some propaganda, anti-American, anti-Israel, promoting the climate change scam or whatever is the propaganda of the moment.

It’s not just sad and wrong, it’s 100% predictable and boring!

Art needs freedom!

Too bad every day we have less and less freedom in the EU.

My generation grew up with the dream of a big hi-fi system and I still have the desire to listen music in the proper way, not out of a cheap radio or, even worse, a smartphone.

I got the new Fosi Audio BT20A Max amplifier to create a desktop system for my computer but when I tested it on my main hi-fi system I was really surprised! The quality of this little amplifier is really good. I lot of dynamic and staging!

Check out the video and visit Fosi Audio official website where you can have 10% discount with the code LUIGIBARBANO

See you next time!

This year my message is very simple: don’t forget the real meaning of Christmas and don’t be afraid to celebrate it properly. Most of all, don’t be afraid to make the right moral choices all year.

Decorations, lunches, dinners, gift and so on are meant to be a celebration for the essence of Christmas but if you forget it, all the lights, food and money will never bring the real joy in your hart.

I wish you all a blessed Christmas full of joy and goodness.

For the technically curious followers this year imaged required:

1 Hi-Fi stereo system

1 Bach’s Christmas Oratorio CD

1 Glass of Lagavulin Scotch while listening

1 8×10 Cambo Legend viewcamera with a Schneider 300mm

1 4×5 Cambo MAsterPlus viewcamera with a Schneider 150mm

1 Hasselblad 503 cx with 80mm and extension tubes.

1 Pentax Mz-s with the 100mm macro

1 6×7 adapter for the 4×5 camera

1 Pentax K1 mkII with a Takumar 55mm 1.8 for the final image

5 film formats Ilford FP4

1l ID-11 developer

200cc Ilford Hypam

5 developing session in the darkroom

2 Broncolor Grafit A generators

3 Broncolor Pulso flah heads

~10 playing of a Christmas Jazz CD while creating the photograph

Isaac Newton described his progress as a lot of little steps while standing on the shoulder of giants.
Mimmo Jodice was a giant in the photographic world. He inspired generations of photographers and contributed to the recognition of photography as a form of art, the most important step for the evolution of the modern photographic culture.

I loved his photographs since I was a teenager and started to explore my passion for photography and I considered Jodice to be one of the greatest photographers of all times.
I loved his use of black and white photography and the gentle touch he put in his images. Every subject was always approached with love and kindness. He never used the shock effect to attract the viewer but always respect for the subject and a quite and gentle invite into the photograph.

I never met him but after I made a video to homage him, a little more than a month ago, I had the opportunity to talk with his wife and listen to the love for him in her voice. From his pictures I always believed Jodice was a beautiful soul, from his wife words I had the confirmation. I perceived him as a kindred spirit and I was planning to find the time to go to visit them in Naples. I was trying to figure all out for December but sadly I’m late now.

Below the video I made a month ago to honor Mimmo Jodice. My greatest satisfaction was the appreciation I received for it from Mimmo and his wife Angela, her words really touched me deeply.

Rest in peace Mimmo.

The concept is pretty simple: the camera takes four pictures shifting the sensor 1 px in all directions so it can have an RGB triplet of information for every pixel to avoid the need to invent the values during the dmosaicing of the Bayer pattern as normally happens.

I will have to realize a series of still life of relatively small objects and I was wondering if the use of the Pixel Shift technology of my Pentax K1 MkII was worth or not. Using it means to have a much longer and complex workflow and the need to use continuous lights instead of flash, so the increase in quality must be balanced with the increase of time to realize the photographs.

Sadly most of the software are not capable to manage properly the Pixel Shift feature so often it means to have to change the entire workflow to get the best quality out of it.

In the video I go in detail in what I found in the experiment.

Here you can download the original RAW files in DNG so you can test yourself.

Pixel Shift 200 ISO

No Pixel Shift 200 ISO

Pixel Shift 6400 ISO

No Pixel Shift 6400 ISO

If you find an easy way to post-process the RAW files made with Pixelshift, let me know!

I participated with a series of images dedicated to the Italian life style. I chose to submit images showing the real life style, far from the crowded touristic spots where the landscape had been already modified to accommodate the expectations of the tourists.

I preferred to show real people in places where the soul of Italy is still present. Some places are little paradises, other urban environments affected by the decadence of the last years but all are still genuine.

Obviously the award is for images made with analog technologies. In this case all the images were realized on Ilford FP4 film with a Zeiss Ikonta from the 1930s.

Enjoy the pictures and check the Award page at www.analogsparksawards.com

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You can now, easily from the comfort of your home, buy some of my prints.

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Explore the collection and find the perfect piece to elevate your home or office.

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Merry Christmas and a Wonderful 2025 full of justice, freedom of speech and pruning of the governments’ trees!

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Christmas is the time to give what we have most precious. There was a time when gold, incense, and myrrh were rare, precious and essential in both their practical and spiritual nature. They were used to recognize the essence of Christ and the effort, choices and sacrifices we need to do each day to travel our life toward the Good.

In the modern times, where the world seems dominated by a diffuse evil stupidity, the most rare, precious and essential gifts we need to give are justice, freedom and a fight to limit the growing cancer of totalitarian governments.

The Wise Men showed us the way to make the world a much better place, where each of us is an equal son of the Lord, just by recognizing the daily choice between Good and Evil.

Every day we have to choose if we want to please Herod to have a semblance of power or if we want to honor Christ and have the long term goal of a better world for every human being, ourselves included.

Sometime is not easy to understand the direction we have to take but when on one side there is Herod, a king ready to kill or harm kids to not loose his power, censoring free speech, attempting to kill his opponents and growing exponentially the tentacles of his bureaucratic control, it is easy to see the path we have to take.

We chose the other side, the one representing justice, freedom and limited powers. May the Lord give to our modern Magi the force to pursue the Good in every choice they will have to make!

May the New Year bring us the freedom to produce, the peace needed to trade our products and a bright future of discoveries and great choices!

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If you are curious to see how I created the image, just check the video here!

I’m so good that this year I received the Claus House Seal of Approval for my 29 years of Christmas photographs! In time for the opening of my new Italian studio!

And here as usual my Christmas picture to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a fantastic 2024. I wish you to live in a free world where all the totalitarian dictators, real and in spirit, will be sent out of our way so we can create freely!

Have a great Christmas and see you all in the new year!

Ciao!

The challenge:

sometime life events screw up our plans and, to make the story short, I found myself in my late parents’ house in Italy with the challenge to create my new photo studio in the attic.

It’s a boring story so I don’t write here about it, but I made a video where I tell it, so if you are curious just check it out.

The location, for some aspects, is not ideal and I come from a previous experience in a 4000 square feet studio in an industrial building, just the room dedicated to the shooting was 10×15 meters (32×50 feet). A very nice situation where I had plenty of room to plan everything I needed without having to compromise. I got spoiled.

The big plus I have now is a lot of years of experience so I know exactly what I really need and what I can live without. Experience is really a huge help. The lesson learned from the mistakes and the right choices are really valuable and I made a lot of both in almost 30 years as a professional photographer.

The attic is a large non refined room used by generations of hoarders. You know, there is room upstairs so just put that thing there, it could be useful later!

Added to all the normal mess there are all my furniture and equipment from my former studio. When I decided to have a change in my life I simply moved everything to the attic, you know, there’s plenty of room up there!

If you are curious to see the status of the room when I decided to transform it in a studio, check out this video. Looking at it in video was quite impressive also for me.

The essential aspect in designing a studio is to find the right place to to set up a backdrop and have sufficient room for the flashes and enough distance from the camera to the subject.

The biggest limit of the attic is the ceiling, it comes down pretty quickly and that means I have only the central part to use for a backdrop.

Luckily 27 degrees is not a very steep inclination for the roof and my father with far-sightedness added dormers to the design so there are some areas with a flat ceiling.

Still the choice is limited to two places: the outside of the darkroom wall or the back of the room.

The back of the room could give me 4/5 feet more of distance from the camera to the backdrop but it will limit a lot the altitude of the lights I can put to the side of the subject. It will also use some space I want to dedicate to other uses.

The outside of the darkroom wall gives less limitations for the lights and I do still life 90% of the time so I do not need a lot of distance from the subject. For some portraits I can still have enough room if I do not pretend the model to jump on a trampoline as I did before in my career!

Seriously talking, a full figure with a telephoto will not be an option, but is plenty of room for a full figure with a normal focal lens and I rarely need the subjects to stand up.

My reference is always the 80mm on the Hasselbad 500c/m. First, I’m used to think in reference to medium format and second, a lot of times I still like to use film when I do portraits. Plus the Hasselblad square format makes it easy: if I can fit the subject in it I know I can abundantly fit it in the larger side of a rectangular format.

With the 38 degrees angle of view of the 80mm on Hasselblad I have 3 meters (9.84 feet) on the subject. Plenty for a full figure. It will mean working very comfortable needing only 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) usually.

Once I have the backdrop in position there are not many tall walls available for furniture. So it’s time to put something in the trash… but remember I come from generations of serial accumulators!!! So please be gentle…

When we emptied my paternal grandparents house we found something very significant in the attic: a small box, tied with a rope and labeled “not usable pieces of cord”. Inside there were, obviously, not usable pieces of cord; too short to have any use, but at the end kept just in case. This tells a lot about my family attitude!

Remember that my grandparent survived two world wars and my parents the WWII. They were able to survive also thank to creative recycling. They built an oven to bake the bread, a distiller to make grappa (used mostly as medical alcohol), ton of equipment to process vegetable to make sugar, tobacco and so on. All that was built recycling things considered trash just few years earlier. This really explain the habit to keep a lot of things just in case.

I know, I try to justify my attitude here but still I have my family DNA… so now it’s a matter to put together the 15 puzzle with Tetris and find the proper accommodation for the furniture and the stuffs I want to keep.

The trick is to empty a “tile” so the puzzle can start.

In my case the tile to empty came in the shape of a huge wardrobe that I moved to my bedroom where I eliminated some old closets… and obviously I kept the wood for a later use, you know, just in case!

All the house is on it’s way to be rearranged and modernized to fit my actual needs but the studio was my priority, and the house is for sale so perhaps I will not have to system it all and my lazy side will be satisfied.

In the studio, the taller closets will become a separator between spaces dedicated to different uses.

I still want to keep some space as working area for my other hobbies, so the North West corner will be dedicated to a workbench and all the tools.

Here you can see how I intend to setup the room.

I’m at the beginning stage and I intend to share with you the steps toward my new studio with all the decision making. I’ll have to paint the floor, walls, create the electrical system and so on. Every choice will come from my previous experience united with the new reality I’m dealing with.

If you like to take a look at what I’m doing and see a video rendering of the studio, check the video below. If you have suggestions use the contact form and let me know what you thing and what you would do differently.

When I started my business in 1994 and few years later built my first studio I had a big advantage: I worked as assistant to a photographer for some years, so I was able to pick his brain and experience and limit my mistakes. Now, with social media, I want to give back and share my experience so if you are going to build a studio you can learn from my experience.

To add some complexity to the challenge I decided to put some more limits:

1) use what I have and buy as less as possible

2) finance the studio selling on ebay (or similar service) a part of what I find in the room

3) build as much as possible recycling. For example lamps will be made out of old cans

4) do as much as possible by myself

5) be more careful in the next video to not have the pants making me look like a plumber when I bend over!

This is the challenge! Follow me and you will see if I’ll make it!