Why I Stopped Shooting Everything And What I'm Building Instead
There was a moment last year when picking up the camera felt wrong.
Not technically wrong. The images were sharp, the exposures correct, the model in frame. But something about the whole process had started to feel hollow like going through the motions of something I had stopped believing in. I was shooting a lot, and enjoying it less with every session.
Looking back, the reasons were clear. I was shooting in the wrong direction.
The Shooting That Changed Everything
Early this year I did a session that I knew, within the first twenty minutes, was a mistake. What the subject wanted in front of the camera had nothing to do with what I was trying to produce. Stiff poses, forced expressions, the kind of image that looks like every other image. Nothing natural, nothing real, nothing that resembled the work I actually admired.
I delivered nothing from that session. Not because the images were technically poor, but because there was nothing worth showing.
That session was clarifying in a way that months of uncertainty hadn't been. I understood immediately what I didn't want and for the first time in a long time, I had a precise idea of what I did.
The Problem With Shooting for the Sake of Shooting
The previous year had been full of sessions with my Sony. A lot of output, very little meaning. The camera felt wrong for what I was trying to do too clinical, too removed from the intimate, documentary approach I was drawn to. I was producing technically competent images that gave me something close to nausea when I looked at them, because they didn't reflect any genuine point of view.
The photographers I kept returning to Greg Williams, Peter Lindbergh were making work that felt alive. Candid without being accidental. Cinematic without being constructed. I spent months studying how they worked. Williams' masterclass, books, hours of footage from photographers whose approach I respected. I was building a vision in theory while waiting for the tool and the collaborators that would let me execute it in practice.
The Decision to Change Everything
After that January session I stopped waiting. I sold the Sony, invested in the Leica Q3 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and committed to a system and an aesthetic that finally matched what I had been developing in my head.
More importantly, I changed how I work and what I look for in a collaboration. I am no longer interested in sessions that produce volume. I am interested in sessions that produce something worth keeping . a day in the life of a model walking through Milan, a coffee that turns into a portrait, a ride to a location outside the city where the light is different and the pace is slower.
I have already scouted those locations. I have built location guides with specific spots, maps, and logistics for models. So that the session can be focused entirely on the work rather than the organisation.
What I Am Building
The archive I am building in 2025 and 2026 is smaller and more deliberate than anything I have produced before. Every session is a choice. Every collaboration is selective. The aesthetic is clear: cinematic, naturalistic, Leica, available light, real moments.
I am not interested in shooting everything. I am interested in shooting the right things, with the right people, in the right light.
That work is just beginning.
If you want to be part of it The Archives show where it's going. The Portfolio Sessions page explains how to collaborate.
