More and more, lately, I indulge in the slow pleasure of instant photography with smartphones (i.e. Instagram app, but not exclusively). I know it sounds a contradiction in terms but this is  having a major impact on the way we shape our visual storytelling.

You know me by now. You know I'm likely to bring me with me tons of bags, gadgets, gizmos, lens, toys, things... But there are also times when I want to travel light and travel back to the times when taking a snapshot was a matter of anticipation, visualization...

The paradox is that from one hand "canonic" Photography convinced us that digital Photography was all we needed to obtain the fastest, most reliable, sharpest, most professional images... From the other, the democratization of visual storytelling through smartphones (ok, sooner or later I'll have to declare I'm a huge Apple fan and I shoot with iPhone, but I'll pretend I'm neutral here, ok?) is giving us Time-Travel tools! Photography-wise, I mean...

Hipstamatic, Instagram, etc... allow that vintage style (that darkroom effects) only available, before, to Pros...and with shooting times and attitudes closer to analogue photography rather than "modern" one. If you use it you know you cannot really shoot high speed and that there is alway a latency time that makes you stare at your smartphone screen...waiting...waiting to see the results. And in the meatime, what you have in front of you might have changed. That beautiful light you wanted to capture, that person, that moment. Gone. Forever. And you only had ONE single shot for you.

And you're still there waiting to see it on screen.

Resolution and file sizes are usually of not big use when it comes to post-production so...what you see is what you get. Like it or not, this is pure popular "analogue" photography. Welcome back Kodachrome...

This is Slow Photography with fast means.

 

So, whenever the Road is moving down my feet, I grab an iPhone (ops!). Moreover if I'm using Fast travel means as airplans or fast Trains. Love the contrast...

Lately I took my time traveling from Rome to Milan (for the opening of a Shoot4Change photo exhibition). I stopped over in Bologna to attend a social photography event (to discuss, how ironic, the impact of new technologies on modern visual storytelling!); and then headed to Modena to enjoy the amazing Ansel Adams exhibition.

I had an iPhone, a compact camera (you never know) and a charming F2 with Trix400 (I'll get the prints in a few days, we'll see...).

This is what I got: a time lapse of visual suggestions. Slow Photography, Fast Trains, Slow Moments.

Fuori/Dentro/Slow/Fast/Analogue/Digital

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