Hey all,

Hope you enjoyed my previous article on shooting at beautiful Lake Como.

As you can probably tell, I’ve been extremely busy lately with my photography business. Between shooting, which is the most fun part, there’s all the admin: editing, sorting out model releases, keywording, (re)submitting…rinse and repeat.

I’m still hoping that this month (July) will be the month when I’ll have a motivational breakthrough that will propel my photography career to the next level. We’re only halfway through the month and no major sales, but then again July/August are generally slow months.

I’m slowly beginning to yield fruits of my labour. As I always tell people, it’s a marathon not a sprint.

One hand washes another…

There’s an expression in my native Portuguese: “uma mão lava a outra”, which literally translates to one hand washes another. The English equivalent is “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” as in you help me and I’ll help you.

I recently pitched, in my google translate Italian, for an opportunity to photograph at a posh restaurant which overlooks the beautiful Piazza Duomo in the heart of Milan, Italy. The proposal was that I would photograph at their premises in exchange for them using my photos for their own marketing needs. They duly agreed but gave me an awful slot of 11am-13:00 and considering we’re in July, it’s just about the worst time of the day to shoot. I did a similar arrangement with a young model who’s building a modeling portfolio and wrote about it here.

Anyway, I had to make do with this unique opportunity and came prepared with my two cameras – Nikon D800 with a 24-70 f2.8 lens and Nikon D7000 with a 10-20mm f.4-5.6 lens. Even if there was tons of light, I still took my tripod since I planned to make some time lapses to submit as stock footage (link to the final result later).

Using the foreground

I didn’t just want to capture the beautiful piazza by itself, so I looked for interesting foreground elements that buyers may find useful when searching for a travel image about Milan and/or Italy.

Using props

The most delicious part was using Italy-cliche props on the foreground. When you think of Italy, what do you think of? Pasta, pizza, gelato, the pope…well none of those were readily available so I went with Aperol Spritz and a cappuccino instead. I wanted some salami and olives but the kitchen was not yet open – maybe next time.

The Piazza

Of course I had to photograph the piazza which includes the famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and Duomo Cathedral! I was already privileged to have such an angle but still needed to make things interesting for this image to stand out.

My Time lapse

Here it is on this link on YouTube. 

Some fine art stuff, as always

I’ve always been drawn to fine art images and captured some spiral corridors on the way to the terrace. These will be submitted to Arcangel Images and Fine Art America.

Image for backgrounds: detail of arcs prospective in a long corridor

Closing thoughts

I’ve duly submitted the images and video to the restaurant and they seem pleased with the results. They’ve suggested they may need some photo services soon and will contact me.  Perhaps they’ll even invite me to capture an event or some interior photographic work, who knows!

I try to make my luck! It’s important to always look out for opportunities outside of Microstock.

Until next time!

Alex