Whether you’re a seasoned travel photographer or just starting out, this space offers practical tips, creative insights, and mindful techniques to help you capture the feeling of a place—not just the look.
Every September, Recco becomes something completely different. The streets fill, the seven Quartieri open their stands, smoke begins rising from the riverbed, and sooner or later the first explosions start rolling through the valley. By night, fireworks take over the sky above the town and the sea.
Mantova had been on my list of places to visit for nearly ten years, which is a fairly ridiculous amount of time for a city that is not particularly difficult to reach.
I had tried to include it in several trips through northern Italy, but something always got in the way. The train schedule did not work. The itinerary became too short. Another city made more sense along the route. Mantova kept getting pushed aside, always with the assumption that I would get there eventually.
One of the most meaningful things someone can say to me after I photograph the place they call home is this:
“I never realized my city was this beautiful.”
I have heard versions of that sentence from people who have lived in the same place for years, sometimes their entire lives. They know its streets better than I ever could. They know which cafés have changed owners, which buildings looked different when they were children, where the traffic becomes impossible and which piazzas they stopped paying attention to a long time ago.
There are few subjects in photography that will exercise your camera skills the way fireworks will. You have a few seconds -sometimes less- between the launch and the final bloom, and in that window every setting you’ve ever read about in a manual suddenly becomes urgent and visible. Shutter speed isn’t a number on a dial anymore. It’s the difference between a frozen spark and a sky-spanning trail. ISO becomes the compromise you’re making for the shot you’d otherwise miss. The dials stop being dials and start being decisions.
A live performance in Recco became a study in light, color, movement, and human expression- and in how a single split second can completely change the emotion of a photograph.
One of the luxuries on this trip was time. Because I was staying nearby while exploring northern Italy as a potential place to live, I was able to return to Piacenza more than once and watch the city change with the weather, the light, and my own attention.
Piacenza was part of a longer stretch of travel through Italy, one of those periods where every train ride quietly carried a second question underneath it: could we actually live here? We were searching for places that felt a little slower, a little greener, a little more breathable without being completely disconnected.
Before moving to Italy, I couldn’t have confidently pointed to Verona on a map. It was one of those names that felt familiar without ever being placed. And if I’m honest, I had even less of an idea of what I’d actually find there with a camera.
Last year, when I was busy photographing a fashion show in Italy I realized that many people drop in for the runways, the afterparties, and then leave- leaving almost no time to explore the local neighborhoods and city highlights. To sit in cafes and restaurants with the locals, or to listen to live music and immerse themselves.
With its cobbled streets, the stunning Sacré Cœur Basilica, artists, and bistros, Montmartre is full of charm. Perched atop a small hill in the 18th arrondissement, this iconic Parisian district has retained the village atmosphere that once captivated the artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. A true melting pot of art and inspiration for cinema, the neighborhood of Montmartre continues to surprise me and is a great destination for travel photographers. However, sometimes, not everything goes exactly as you’ve planned. And the two times I’ve gone to shoot photos of Sacré Cœur, I’ve encountered some… technical issues.
