Alberto Dall'Oglio [dallalb]
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BIOGRAPHY
I fell in love with photography in 2002, when I bought a used Yashica 109MP 35 mm film SRL and a set of used Yashica prime lenses. As a mechanical engineer I was immediately interested in technical aspects involved by photography, since I strongly believe that firstly you need to learn everything about technique… then you can forget about it. Every art cannot abstract from strong technical basis, because otherwise it does not have the tools to develop its full potentials. So I started with film photography from the beginning, learning the basis from the books and from my errors on the field; I tried to use my gear in fully manual mode and not to rely on automatic functions, because I wanted to understand as much as possible how controlling the photographic process. Some years later, as my passion increased, I upgraded my equipment buying a Canon EOS 3 SRL film camera, to take advantage of its advanced features and precise controls. At those times the digital revolution took off but I did not like the APS-C sensor size and the full frame was not affordable by an amateur. So I started my approach to digital photography from the editing step, scanning my film and taking advantages of the power and flexibility of the digital post processing.
I’m not interested in shooting a huge number of photos, but I prefer to work on quality and to refine my ability of synthesis: shooting with film can help to achieve this purpose, since every frame has a real cost and you cannot preview the result on the field. I scan and spend time in editing only my best shots. An ideal goal would be shooting only one frame to fully describe the visual potential of a scene and to fully convey my message.
As a general rule I keep on telling myself: “keep it simple”, since I’m strongly persuaded that visual simplicity is one of the greatest principles of photography. If something is “simple”, everyone can understand it or there are more chance of communication. Maybe a lot of efforts and technical skills can be required to take a photo, but if the visual result is “simple” to the viewer’s eyes, it’s message is straightforward.
I believe that photography is a mean to reveal the beauty of the things that surround us. And it’s the light that can transform the things and that reveals their beauty to our eyes. So, the photographer is firstly a light-seeker: he has the privilege of seeing the power of light that discloses the beautiful soul of everything. I mostly find this in nature and landscapes and I believe that you don’t have to travel a lot or necessary to go to wonderful places to take good photos: the challenge is discovering and showing to other people the extraordinary beauty in the ordinary life, the unimportant detail that nobody will notice or that everyone notices but not under that special light which reveals its beauty. This is the (ambitious) purpose of my photography.
*SEPTEMBER 2010 UPDATE *
Finally, I too swiched to a full digital workflow purchasing a Canon 5D Mark II full frame digital camera. But a camera is still a tool and this not changes my photographic goals and philosophy; surely it can expand and enhance them.
Country: IT