11.15.2016 Gabriele Lopez

Gabriele Lopez with X70 - Episode 4

Hello to all friends out there!
I have talked before about I like to use photography in my daily life, as a diary and feeling expression. This goes hand in hand with my professional work as a photographer, but at the same time, it stays divided.
As I write this I am confronting myself with so many memories from last months… I have worked a lot and often this included traveling away from my hometown, so I just accumulated months of life in the form of snapshots.
And while my other cameras were in the photo-bag, my compact camera was always in my pocket, or hanging from my neck.
So here I am, with a giant puzzle of pictures in the form of contact sheets and little prints I have made for my personal paper diaries that often stay hidden for months or even years, until is time to take them out and organizing them, and this is often in the form of self-published fanzines.
Pictures become fragments of experiences and a tool to satisfy the constant tension of experiencing and recording life itself. It is about sensation that you had before, or that you never had.
Does method need to be decided before in this kind of photography or is it better to be instinctive and set things together lately? I prefer the last way for my personal camera work and what I find later is a big human experience, full of instinct, unpredictable, free, symbolic, uplifted by an infinite number of point of views rather than one…when you pretend that everything gets explained is nice to be surprised that you don’t know much.
For this way of shooting, a compact camera is a perfect companion of everyday life. Subway rides, long city walks, meeting people somewhere and just capture something as you experience it is easier as you have a simple tool that does what a camera is  for: take pictures, preserve memories, be a little black box that connects you with the world as you live it.
This camera resurrect a tradition of photography from the “Provoke” days where a small camera is a perfect tool for daily instinctive exploring and experience.

All the images have been taken with the X70 in JPG mode. I find these (shown in settings picture) settings perfect, all I have to do is make a little contrast curve now and then, but most of the times pictures are pretty perfect just out of camera, so to have a perfect snapshot on the go. What I wish it will come in future updates is just the data overprint option, straight in the file. Considered an amateur thing, it is truly a treasure option when you make your photography life a daily diary to preserve, note and remember.

Continue to read:
 Episode #1
 Episode #2 -My Photography-
 Episode #3 -X70
 Episode #4 -X70 part2
 Episode #5 -Final