There is nothing to compare with the immense pleasure from seeing our work emerging from the printer on the paper that we have decided which best suits our work.
– Charlie Waite
In my opinion, you don’t complete your training as a photographer until you enter the world of printing. Discovering how the different textures and surfaces of photographic papers transform an image is a truly enriching experience. As Charlie Waite says, it is an immense pleasure.
To be able to appreciate the result of our work with a hard copy in our hands is, in my opinion, a necessary step in the photographic process.
On the other hand, many photographers stress the importance of focusing on specific projects in order to evolve in our work as photographers. Some time ago I thought that a good way to conclude my projects would be to make a book that would present the photos together with texts that would allow the readers to go deeper into the meaning and intention of the project. For this reason, some time ago I took some courses on book creation and bookbinding.
But after a few projects, two problems made me give up the handmade book as a means of presenting a photographic project. The first one was the scarce availability of papers suitable for printing photo books with domestic inkjet printers. It is almost impossible to find papers on the market of a suitable grammage to make the booklets that will make up the book. The second has to do with the amount of work required to make a book by hand. It is impossible to make editions of more than one copy in a reasonable amount of time.
One solution I came up with was to make presentation folders in DIN A4 size that included a limited number of photos, between 5 and 15 with a text about the project. I did a couple of tests and was satisfied with the result. But for various reasons, the execution of photographic projects was postponed, until recently, the appearance in the second issue of Nature Vision Magazine of the article The Making of a Folio, by Murray Livingston, https://www.naturephotographers.network/nature-vision-magazine made me take up again the idea of concluding my projects with the making of handmade portfolios by myself, from the making of the folders, the presentation texts and the printing of the texts and the photographs.
In this way I can offer my portfolios in small editions to interested persons.
Below is a list of the portfolios I’m producing and links to their individual pages.
The Lightness of the Winter
In the last two winters I have visited different landscapes in Germany: the Danube valley, the Neckar river valley, the Taunus, Westerwald and Vogelsberg mountains. This portfolio presents images of those winter days of diffuse, still light, of tonalities almost pastel of the elements of the landscape – trees, bushes, meadows, watercourses – which blend and combine to create a landscape of humble beauty, as mild as winter itself.
Lost In Landscapes 