Portraits

How a portrait comes together

A good portrait depends far less on equipment than people think, and enormously on how you feel in front of the lens. That's why the first part of a shoot isn't photographic: we talk about what you actually need — a book, a cover, images for your site, promo shots for a band — and look at a few references together, so we know where we're going before we get there.

From there I decide the light, the place and the pace of the day. People who aren't used to being photographed usually loosen up after the first ten minutes: my job in that first half hour is to make you forget there's a camera.

Natural light and built light

I work in two opposite ways and I like them both. There's the natural-light portrait, clean, where the face carries everything and very little is needed: a window, a wall, the person. And there's built light in the studio, where colour becomes part of the subject — magenta and cyan splitting a face, a neon tube inside the frame, haze making the beam visible.

Many of the images above were made that way: painted backdrops, coloured gels, masks and costumes, and now and then a scene constructed like a painting, with props and still-life light. If you have a precise visual idea, we build it. If you don't, we find it by looking at who you are.

For people who work with their own image

A growing part of my work is for people whose face is part of their profession: musicians who need recognisable promo images, models building a book, professionals who have to present themselves properly on their own site.

These are different from a family portrait. The images have to survive cropping — vertical for social, horizontal for a cover, square for a profile — and hold a consistent style from one frame to the next, because they'll be seen as a set. When the shoot is for a band I photograph the group together too, which is a different craft again: five people in one frame, each of them still recognisably themselves.

What you get

I make the first selection myself: out of everything shot, I keep the frames where the person is actually present, not only the technically correct ones. You see them in a private gallery, you choose the ones you want, and I take those through post-production — colour, light, skin handled with restraint, nothing turned to plastic.

I deliver files ready for the web and at high resolution for print, in the crops you'll genuinely use.

Where I work

I work across Tuscany and I travel happily: I come to you, or we find the right place together — an interior, a house, a wall that works, a studio when the light needs controlling. If the project deserves it, I'll go beyond the region.