A Fist Full of Film

The Italian Job

So here I am on the Island of Giglio off the coast of Italy, I had been traveling for 23 hrs and 49 minutes from taxi, to LAX, to Frankfurt, to Shuttle to Connecting flight into Florence, to limo driver to Porto S. Stefano, to catch a 48 min Ferry to this Island to meet Adriano for a taxi to the Little Castle now converted into a hotel we would be staying at.  Bear in mind I was confirmed for this job literally a day before while shooting pickup shots for a WW2 movie shot in Romania, but now shot in San Diego, faking Romania which was probably faking Poland or something.

So you can imagine the images on this one roll of film on my Leica.  Looking back, and it truly is about the Journey, not so much the destination.  That’s why often you deal so much in destinations that when you arrive, to Disney World, or Grand Canyon, or Ground Zero, or Mallory Pier in the Keys, or St. John, or in this case the Costa Concordia wreck you look at it and go…”Okay, check that off.”

I was covering the wreck with a buddy of mine Gavin, and we were working for this clean water outfit.  And this tiny island had almost every hotel filled to capacity for a winter month(it was very cold at times), when normally its a summer place.  It was the worlds news media populated and cultivated that little village, and we in some ways represented the Americans.  Since there were no other Americans on that island.  It was strange to run into the same two hundred people throughout the day.  But we did.  And the Supplementary coast guard and military they shipped in from elsewhere shared our complimentary continental breakfast with us.  

In this picture is Laura, a photographer for the Italian News Media, I was a Hollywood Cinematographer and she was an international news photog, and we both struck up a conversation with Gianluca(another photographer who you will see here), and we as picture takers have the same problem,  there are so many amazing pictures, but there are no pictures of us.  So we “photographed” each other at this rock, which is the ridge that extends underwater and is what the ship is resting on right now(and what caused its problems too).

It has been a dream to travel and photograph for either the news or do documentary style photography, but somehow I changed paths and went for the more high gloss of Fashion and Hollywood.  Being in a position to do this job, and potentially do more jobs like this was lifting.  Because if it really is about the Journey, and its about the People, (locally or international), that you meet that you didn’t know before because there 24 hours of modern day travel between you two, who else is out there?  What other adventures are waiting to be captured on a frame or two?  Because the moment you stop, you stop.  You stop learning, stop adapting, stop realizing, you stop understanding.  But the worst part is, that you don’t even realize the stagnation of your mind.  Naysayers will try to cocoon or compartmentalize an existence according to their own life experiences, which is limited in scope and therefore inaccurate.

So doing something that scares you, that is off the grid, reminds you of the bigger world than the six inches infront of your face.  Now its just a question of getting to that, bearing in mind its just the journey, not so much destination that six inches must be moving in.

Island of Giglio, Italy

Leica M6 Ilford Delta 400, 50mm Summilux