THE CURE
In a time where everything is chasing speed, convenience, and automation, it’s almost subversive to slow down and choose something more… elemental.
We are living through an age that worships the new. Every day, tech giants throw at us algorithms smarter than yesterday’s gods, cameras that promise to think faster than we ever could, autofocus systems that track eyelashes in the dark and predict your next move. And yet, somehow, the real answer - the cure - is something we've had all along.
Talking about the real photography. just like the masters did.
On the street, where everything unfolds in a heartbeat and vanishes just as quickly, I need to switch to the fundamentals. Zone focusing. Hyperfocal distance. Pre-set aperture, distance, and… intention.
Let’s me ben honest with you: mine is not nostalgia. It is not romanticism. It’s the raw, mechanical truth that nothing is faster than a camera already set to shoot. No AF system can match it on the street.
Is there poetry in that? Sure, but there’s logic, too.
We can talk all day about technological progress, but if I need my camera to be truly instantaneous on the street, from sleep to action, I don’t rely on anything automatic. My way to work on the street is very fast: I often raise up my camera at the very last moment, soI don’t want the camera to think: because there is a delay in that. I want my camera to be ready: 2 meters or 3 meters depeneding what I want to achieve. And that’s where manual focus, with the zone focusing technique, that old magician’s trick of trusting in optics and distance, proves itself superior. Again.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? In a world run by artificial intelligence, the cure is found in manual settings, physical dials, depth of field, and glass. It is the miracle of a fantastic science: optics. Yes, the ancient science of optics still holds its own, a precision so sharp it feels like sorcery. But it’s not just about technique. It’s about experience. The moment shifts. The gesture changes. I’m completely involved in the creation.
And that is the message: even when I shoot digitally, which is most of the time, I resist the passive comfort of full automation. I stay connected to the act. I make decisions. I slow down only to move faster, to see better. Photography stops being a technological exercise and becomes a craft again. A pleasure. A responsibility. A ritual.
Shooting like this, on the street, where everything is real, unfiltered, unscripted, I feel a different kind of clarity. Not just in the image, but in the process itself. The camera disappears. The moment appears. Am I wrong a lot of times? Sure, but hey, so does every autofocus. And honestly I prefer that the error is because of me and not because of the camera.
Yes, they’ll keep building smarter cameras. They’ll keep promising miracles with the race of megapixels and the AI features. But I’ll keep going out there with mine set to f/8, f11, f16 and the distance locked.
Back to photography.
Because photography, when done with intention, when stripped of all the noise, remains the best answer we’ve ever had to the question of what it means to be present.
Guys, a last thing before to go… I have just launched the new visual blog where I will share my most recent work and my idea of street photography. Please take a look here: