I can do it all

The paradox we’re talking about in this article is often one of the most coveted and fruitful foods for our artistic growth, and it always manifests through comparison with colleagues. Every time we visit an exhibition or decide to go out shooting with company, we look, we absorb, we learn something new. We see something that strikes us and we want to do the same. Aside from the fact that what we learn isn’t always right, and often what we want to emulate might be… total nonsense, but that’s not what I want to delve into.

When we come back and look at the photos we’ve just taken with such commitment, something is always missing: the selective focus of a very fast lens, or conversely, the infinite depth of field of a small sensor; perhaps the impeccable perspective of a medium telephoto for portraits, or the formal balance of a 4/3 format, or the spectacular, nervous dynamism of the 2/3 format… Look for the deficiency yourself, find that “or” among these and the others you surely have! I know something is missing; it’s missing for everyone, there’s no room for the conditional. Obviously, we don’t like having deficiencies and, as much as possible, we want to fill the gaps.

In these moments, more often than not, an imaginary animal arrives that I’ve learned to know from the web: the “monkey.” It’s that thing that pushes us to seek other solutions to do as others do. However, it must be said that emulation is the first step of artistic growth—a fundamental and ever-present step in a photographer’s evolution. Even the best do it, and it’s not necessarily a negative thing, at least not always!

In fact, at the beginning of a career, you always start with a course that teaches the basics: shutter speed, aperture, depth of field… and what initially attracts us are the various technical challenges. These small challenges allow us to deploy all our erudition, enabling us to say: IT CAN BE DONE! (please read this phrase slowly, shouting every single word with clarity and emphasis, and definitely not forgetting to keep your eyes popping out of their sockets with ecstatic excitement). But then, you have to buy the lens that makes certain things possible—the one used by that guy who did that thing… because suddenly, that camera-and-lens combination I wanted no hassle with sadly has limits, and all at once you realize it can’t do everything. And there’s the monkey, racing toward the horizon straight for the poor victim. Often it becomes a big, ugly, hairy, and pissed-off ape that makes us look at our financial situation with very little lucidity just to satisfy the wild beast!

There are certain things you learn over time, with disappointments, but also by reaching the goals you set for yourself. Photography is vast. Personally, I admire certain types of photography, like wildlife, but I would never do it because I find the practice beyond boring. Similarly, I don’t do theater photography because in the countryside there are no concrete opportunities to work seriously at it, and I don’t want to buy expensive lenses that I’d have no way of using, even if I offered my services for free.

So, doing photography is also a matter of possibility as well as choice. I find it quite important to position our “being a photographer”—whether we do it for work or passion—decisively and without wasting time. We need to focus on what we like or don’t like. I certainly won’t buy a 600mm that weighs more than it costs because I don’t take pictures of birds, nor will I ever go to photograph a lion in the wild; I’d probably do everything except photograph it: I’d definitely run away!

However, the concept doesn’t have to be so macroscopic; there can be other simpler choices. For me, it was the decision to stop using extremely wide lenses—not because I don’t like playing with perspective; on the contrary, I like it a lot. But I noticed that when I used lenses wider than 20mm on full frame, there was a kind of detachment from my way of storytelling through photography, as if I had to use them on purpose and not with the necessary naturalness. Perhaps defining certain decisions as “simple” is wrong, certainly reductive, because they influence the formation of a well-defined artistic personality.

Simply put, you can’t photograph everything. Robert Capa said the world is full of photographs and it’s up to us to go find them (I don’t know the exact text or translation, but I know the concept very well!). But the world is big! Can I be capable of taking all the photographs that are possible? I envy those who can; I limit myself to taking those that interest me. I use my photographic knowledge not to take every possible photo, but to take, from time to time, the photographs I am interested in. Because in the end, the only photography that really counts is the one we have been able to dwell within.