How and when did you start photography?
I’ve started to get into photography about a year and half ago. I was at a dinner with two of my friends when we started to talk about how we all had good photography equipment, but we never tried to get more serious about it. We decided to start a photography page and found a name for it that same night. Fujikon, which is basically the brand names of the three cameras we had at the time (Fujifilm + Nikon + Canon) united. I had already worked as a freelance web designer so I already knew how to use the Adobe suite for photography and designs, so I made the logo a few days after and my friend started the Instagram and Facebook page, since he has more knowlege about Social Media. Long story short, we started to photograph our friends and started to improve our photography skills. Then friends of our friends asked us for photos and few months after I just knew that there were a lot of people interested in our photography. We had models interested in collaborating with us and we were invited to take photos at a fair in our city. It kept going on from there and now we have over 15,000 followers on Instagram and work regularly with models, brands and shops! I found the process of learning extremely enjoying and I think that’s what really got me and my friends into photography.
What is your favorite subject to photograph?
I’m mainly into portraits as I really like to catch people expressions and essence into pictures. I also love when people like how their portraits come out, so it encourages me to give my absolute best to make them happy. I also like to shoot pets and panoramas but I’m not really that experienced in those fields. I’ll have to learn more into composition for those kind of shots.
What does photography mean to you?
Photography is the constant process of learning on how you perceive the World around you. Everything can be beautiful if seen from the right perspective and we, photographers, shape the light through our lenses in order to get people to appreciate what they already have (or had) around them. Photography allows me to give more focus to what’s around me and really helped me to appreciate the small things. I’m also always on the lookout to find new locations to shoot and thanks to photography I was able to find beautiful places I would have never went to otherwise.
What kind of gear do you use? And why Quadralite?
I really like to travel lightweight when doing casual photography during trips. I like to have all the range of lenses while doing more serious work and/or portraits, so I invested into Fujifilm APS-C system. It’s really lightweight with affordable prices and I don’t find any major drawback compared to other fullframe systems such as Sony, Canon or Nikon. My main camera is an X-T2 with vertical grip (hopefully I’ll upgrade to an X-T3 soon!), with some backup bodies. I really love the physical dials on Fujifilm bodies, it really allows me to have everything under control and it gives a nice vintage touch to the look of the camera. They also work great for videos! I like to make slow motion during shootings so that I can post little videoclips later on Instagram.
As of lenses, I have almost the whole lineup of Fujifilm lenses, but I really love the 35 1.4, 56 1.2 APD and the 90 f2. They truly have some magic built into those lenses. I miss not owning the 16mm as I’ve heard it’s a great lens, but it’s too expensive and slow for a focal lenght that I can’t use that much. I'm hoping to find used one for a good price sometime in the future.
I also own a Mavic Pro for aerial videos. I’ve recently used it to make some aerial portraits and I think the photos at the end came out pretty well!
As of Quadralite, I used to use other brands for Fujifilm, but I really felt limited by their capabilities, either by portability, power or compatibility. I had found a studio in my city that used Quadralite gear and I completely fell in love with those products! I have even applied to become Quadralite Ambassador as I would really like to let other people know about this brand. Hopefully I’ll become one in the future! As of now, we borrow Quadralite gear from the studio whenever we can. It really helps when trying to get creative shots. Also they are compact and feel extremely solid. Honestly I think that Quadralite products can easily compare to other brand products that costs 4x more and in some cases they are even better. For anyone that’s reading this, don’t just trust my words as it might look like I’m saying this just because I was selected as photographer of the season by them. If you find any studio that has Quadralite gear, give them a try and I’m sure you’ll fall in love with their products too.
What makes the good picture stand out from the average?
It’s either the thought put into composition or the color grading, or the spark in people’s eyes, or an interesting expression, or a combination of any of these. Many people don’t like to add any post processing to their images, but I think that in this day and age it’s essential to learn at least how to color grade pictures, as it basically enhances the expressive capabilities of a photographer. Instagram is a great place to get new artistic ideas by looking at other photographers. Everyone can point and shoot with a camera or a phone, so to get something that stands out from the average try to look at things in angles or distances that people wouldn’t usually be able to look at and you’ll see how your shots instantly become more interesting!
What are your career goals?
I really hope that we start to get more recognition from important brands, so that we might have more chances to travel, visit new places and enlarge our photography vision. Other than photography, I’ve also just graduated into the science and technology field so I really have multiple opportunities to choose. My ideal goal would be to combine those two passions together by working both as a web developer and photographer for clients and brands or I can just keep both jobs separated by working both as a photographer and as an app developer. I’m also currently developing an app to help photographers and models reach more easily, but it’s still in developement so I can’t tell much more about it as of now.
What inspires you?
I’m a really curious person so anything, really! Everytime I find something that I don’t know much of, if it interests me even just a little, I start to get interested and study about it.
I think any kind of creative discovery really depends on how having first been immersed in a huge set of motives, elements and ideas and then combine them in some way.
For me, synthesizing ideas really depends on having an universe of ideas to be combined in the first place, so for photography I really like to watch other people works, either in magazines, on posters or on Instangram and find out what really makes the photo stand out. In the end I try to combine all of these ideas to make something new and original or something that comes closer to my style of photography.
In case you want to see more of Vincenzo and his friends, check out their Instagram.