Hi everyone!
I'm a non binary (pronouns: they/them) portrait photographer from Rome, Italy.
I got into film photography by a strange route: I got interested in digital photography when I was a teenager because I couldn't find good stock photos to make composites in Photoshop, I applied to study multimedia digital arts at the academy of fine arts of Brera (in Milan) and I finally ended up in England as an Erasmus photography student because there wasn't an equivalent of my course of studies there....anyway, back in the UK I was encouraged to shoot only black and white film for the first six months of college and I fell in love with it!
My first film cameras were a Nikon F-301 with a 50mm f1.8 series E lens (which I remember paying 50 pounds for and it came with a bag and accessories..good old times) and a Mamiya C3 with the 80mm f2.8 Sekor lens.
I loved the ease of use of the Nikon and the close up capabilities and quality of the Mamiya.
Eventually I got a bit fed up of wresting with the parallax error while using the Mamiya and I got a Zenza Bronica Sq-Ai.
I moved to London, where I worked for too many years (3 or 4!) as a studio assistant in big photographic studios, and I used to bring my camera to work to take advantage of the every tiny break to take pictures of my colleagues (you can see them all together here)
Eventually I started assisting photographers directly and to shoot some commissions too, so I finally got some money, and that's when GAS hit me hard.
Initially I got a digital camera to shoot commissions: a Nikon D800, which I still use now, but I didn't have enough money to buy a zoom, so I use only two prime lenses, a 50mm and an 85mm and I zoom with my feet
Then I got a Horizon 202 to literally "widen" my point of view which had been square for years at that point.
Then I went to Budapest where I found an incredible deal for a Pentax 6x7 with the 105mm f2.4 Super Takumar lens which I couldn't resist
Then I got commissioned by a gallery curator to photograph "the borderline of gender" and I just HAD to buy a large format camera (a Horseman), so I could use the Scheimpflug principle to narrowly focus on the models’ eyes and blur their bodies.
All the models where trans people and this was a stylistic choice, a visual response to the media’s tendencies to only focus on trans* people bodies, virtually erasing their identities (you can see all the pictures here)
Over the years I collected many other cameras, just for the sake of collecting them, but I won't bore you with the whole list or we would be here forever and I've already written a lot.
Nowadays I shoot mainly digital and large format film and you can see my work at www.cloudymoroni.com
I'm a non binary (pronouns: they/them) portrait photographer from Rome, Italy.
I got into film photography by a strange route: I got interested in digital photography when I was a teenager because I couldn't find good stock photos to make composites in Photoshop, I applied to study multimedia digital arts at the academy of fine arts of Brera (in Milan) and I finally ended up in England as an Erasmus photography student because there wasn't an equivalent of my course of studies there....anyway, back in the UK I was encouraged to shoot only black and white film for the first six months of college and I fell in love with it!
My first film cameras were a Nikon F-301 with a 50mm f1.8 series E lens (which I remember paying 50 pounds for and it came with a bag and accessories..good old times) and a Mamiya C3 with the 80mm f2.8 Sekor lens.
I loved the ease of use of the Nikon and the close up capabilities and quality of the Mamiya.
Eventually I got a bit fed up of wresting with the parallax error while using the Mamiya and I got a Zenza Bronica Sq-Ai.
I moved to London, where I worked for too many years (3 or 4!) as a studio assistant in big photographic studios, and I used to bring my camera to work to take advantage of the every tiny break to take pictures of my colleagues (you can see them all together here)
Eventually I started assisting photographers directly and to shoot some commissions too, so I finally got some money, and that's when GAS hit me hard.
Initially I got a digital camera to shoot commissions: a Nikon D800, which I still use now, but I didn't have enough money to buy a zoom, so I use only two prime lenses, a 50mm and an 85mm and I zoom with my feet
Then I got a Horizon 202 to literally "widen" my point of view which had been square for years at that point.
Then I went to Budapest where I found an incredible deal for a Pentax 6x7 with the 105mm f2.4 Super Takumar lens which I couldn't resist
Then I got commissioned by a gallery curator to photograph "the borderline of gender" and I just HAD to buy a large format camera (a Horseman), so I could use the Scheimpflug principle to narrowly focus on the models’ eyes and blur their bodies.
All the models where trans people and this was a stylistic choice, a visual response to the media’s tendencies to only focus on trans* people bodies, virtually erasing their identities (you can see all the pictures here)
Over the years I collected many other cameras, just for the sake of collecting them, but I won't bore you with the whole list or we would be here forever and I've already written a lot.
Nowadays I shoot mainly digital and large format film and you can see my work at www.cloudymoroni.com
)! Nice images! 