Matteo's Wasps' Nest

This post is about my concept of photography.

I’ve enjoyed taking photos since I was 8, with an easy to use film compact camera. I had no idea about composition, exposition, focus whatsoever: I just pointed and clicked, as it was natural and as it was fun: capture the instant.

I stopped taking photos when I was 11, just to begin again with a digital compact camera as I was 16. I was scared about composition, exposition, lenses, focus, depth of field: it all looked crazy to me. Just too complex:”Taking photos should be easy!” I thought.

The little digital camera broke after a few months: I carried it in my bag everyday until I sat on it…mmmm..

In December 2006 I felt that desire again and bought my first “semiserious” camera: Canon Powershot S3 IS. I learned about composition, exposition, lenses, focus, DoF…and I enjoyed taking nice photos, creative shots. I mixed the passion for photography with love for my city and Padova became my favourite subject.

For my last birthday I got a Leica. An old one. A IIIa built in 1936, with 4 lenses, filters and so on. I felt in love. With Leica, with film, with black and white photography, with the waiting time to get prints, with the mistery of not being sure whether it was a good shot until you see the prints. With the click. With the “Think before you click” philosophy, as opposed to “Click as much as you can: your 2GB card is huge and you can choose the best shots at home. With the simplicity. With the rangefinder, obviously. I felt so much in love that, after two weeks, I bought another Leica, the CL, with two lenses.

My move to film was clearly an evolution as a photographer (it is still a bit a regression in terms of photo quality, but there are still plenty of things I need to learn about film photography, manual exposition, manual exposure time and manual focus…), but it was an evolution by going backwards: IIIa is from 1936, CL is from 1972.