the why.
the third tower, why?
Hungarian writer Antal Szerb wrote a book about his travels in 1930s Italy, showing how fascism took over everyday life, and how the sense of freedom and privacy was lost in things as mundane as a Sunday hike. It was only at the Third Tower, the Torre del Montale in San Marino, where he found a spot secluded enough to reminisce about times with more liberty and fewer demands.
For Szerb and some of his readers, myself included, the tower became a symbol of freedom. The freedom to decide not to view things as the powerful interpret and filter them, but to go there and see them for myself. My biological eyes, my bad eyesight, my central nervous system, my upbringing, identity and prejudice all still put a filter between the sight and my self. But those are mine and not someone else's.
We visited San Marino in 2015. The Third Tower still stands, but what also stands next to it is an immense Interpol building. Police. So much about privacy.
the how.
imperfections stay!
I have one rule: what gets on the memory card stays. I do not edit, apart from a bit of straightening. (Though you can straighten the living daylight out of the previous photo, the tower will appear slanted. It isn't.)
If I choose a filter, it happens on the camera, with the exception of the odd social media post. If I am not satisfied with a photo, I do one thing: delete it. If I am not satisfied with any photos about a subject, I have two choices: let it go or go back and take the photo again. That might cost money and time, though.
I don't build sets or pose people. Well, most of the time. Sometimes I build scenes of Lego minifigures and then do some macro, mostly for presentations. Sometimes I arrange things in the kitchen when I want to take a coffee-related photo.
Not that there is anything wrong about this. Two enormous inspirations of mine, Szilveszter Makó and Peter Lindbergh, do that. Makó has elaborate sets built and places the model in the set; Lindbergh used to think up various scenes, asked his celebrity subjects to act them out, and used up 4-5 rolls of film to capture these. Still, my favorite shot by Lindbergh is Adrian Brody behind a window with a faint reflection of the photographer on the left.
My gear is nothing special or professional. These days I am using a Canon EOS RP with a 24-105 and a 100-400 lens. Before that I used entry-level EOS-D cameras, touristy ones. For wide-angle shots, I pull out my iPhone (although I am very particular about the angle when I do that).
this is not a business offer.
send me or invite me?
If you know a place you believe I'd find interesting, or you want me to tag along and help you document a place or an event, let me know. If it's very remote or it's outside the European Union, I might take longer to make it happen, and it might not happen. But I'll keep a list of these.
Note that this isn't a business offering. I take no deadlines and send no quotes. I mostly do project work for my own company, umn content agency. If you want to co-operate on a project, contact info[at]umncontentagency.com.