Lorenzo Piano. photographer

Whales’ Island Video Shooting

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:08:22 +0000

In the middle of the winter, while Bologna is facing one of the most aboundant snow falls of the past 100 years, “Whales’ Island“, Sicily’s pride, met in the city to shoot the video of their “Opening Words” from new EP “Chronicles of Pretenders”; Stanga, enrolled as director, entrusted me the role of Director of Photography.

We planned two days of shooting and laid out an aproximate script: close references to the lyrics’ meaning, dolly movements, contrasted illumination and hard backlights… but the weather changed and when the snow started to fall everything turned to “improvisation”… No Problem: working with the band was very easy as they’re all good people, flexible, patient (tolerant) and creative.

We spent the first day shooting outdoors, in Bologna downtown, under heavy snow. Some of the members were asked to stand still under the snow without coat, in sweater at minus 10° C, other had to walk back and forth of slippy streets while one of them had to play his guitar (whitout coat) on a narrow, slippy, snowy slope street.

Day two, in spite of forecasts, was sunny and warm (minus 2° C) and gave us the chance to shoot some of the planned scenes in even more interesting location. One of these was a suburbs’ train station were one of the members had to wait 15 minutes still in 15 cm of snow for a train to leave the station to shout his part. We then spent the rest of the day in a reharsals room to shoot some live scenes.

Directing the photography is taking care of framing, camera movements,subject movements related to framing and camera position, lighting and deciding the mood of the scenes… Lot of nice duties that left me the time to shoot the making of. And here are some of the pictures (more available here). I know it’s not a trailer, but I hope it will whet your appetite while the editing is done. Stay tuned for updates…

The EP is Co-Produced by Indelirium Records and No Reason Records, and is available in the labels’ respective e-shops.

Birra Hops… Riccione’s beer in late autumn

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:25:46 +0000

One of the most requested shootings in the past year have been food and venues shooting… two of the most underrated subjects a photographer can face. Both require knowledge of lighting techniques, strobe and continuous lighting and a complete collection of strobes and light modifiers. Icing on the cake, one of the last assignment of the year was a combo of the two: a complete covering of a venue, a beer/burger restaurant on the adriatic coast, a sets of pictures for the panoramic 360° VR view and some pictures portraying the beers in the context and it’s brewing at the venue. Here’s one of the pictures from that day.

Linterno new Single out NOW on iTunes Store

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:04:16 +0000

It’s not a shooting, nor a job I’ve been doing on the past days… it’s my band’s first single available on iTunes. You can check it out by clicking on the image on the left!!! Enjoy!

Linterno – New Video out NOW!!!

admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:34:02 +0000

Finally it’s out! Few hours and it’s already over 100 views. If I think back to the shooting days, being the director of fotography in a video you act in is far easier than be the photographer of your own band’s promo shooting. And there are all the pros of team working! Enjoy!!!

Linteno – Failing Time Teaser

admin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:25:00 +0000

The work for the edit of the video of my band (Linterno) is almost over. The final cut of the video will be finally out on december 15 2011. Stay tuned for updates)

Linterno Promo Shooting

admin — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:07:15 +0000

Linterno Promo Shooting

Taking pictures of bands has always been my aim and one of the things that introduced me to serious photography back in 2002. I love it as much as playing guitar in my band. So, when your band is approaching the release of a new record you know that it’s time to enter the photo studio and stand on the set… on the other side of the camera. And here’s what happened: Linterno, the band I play in, is going to publish its second full length and needed the pictures for both the booklet and the press pack. We had an whole (october) afternoon to shoot and posed both in the studio and its premises (railways, gardens, suburbs…). Luckily my wife, Marjana, is a brilliant assistant and allowed us to work fast by checking every picture and shooting at the right moment. Here’s a classical picture.

NRHA Reiner (back) cover

admin — Fri, 20 May 2011 21:05:53 +0000

In early April, I spent a week in Rieden’s OstBayernHalle for (and with) Andrea Bonaga to cover the NRHA European Futurity. NRHA, the hosting association and assigner, requested us an insider view of the event and, while Andrea spent most of his time shooting the races (as he is a world famous master in western riding photography), I spent most of the time producing images to report the background, the feelings and the people of the event. The picture on this page can be called “Enter Judges” and is now the Inside Back Cover of May’s Issue of NRHA Reiner (USA).

As usual, the picture is credited to “Andrea Bonaga – andreabonaga.it” even if he is visible in the top right of the picture, ready to shoot the Futurity Open Final

Ice cream balls

admin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:28:22 +0000

The picture I’m posting today is a fast edit of one of the pictures that will be used for an ad. They asked me to shoot some client made Ice Cream and I figured out that a good way to have it look interesting was shooting the way you can see here. I’m sorry for the huge watermark but even if these pictures are not the best from my shootings but just a sample for my blog, I’ve had some of them used for commercial purposes without any permission.

Going Homepage

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:38:23 +0000

I’m in kreuth (Germany) in the OstBayernHalle, to cover, along with Andrea Bonaga the NRHA European Futurity, one of the main european events about Reining (western horse riding). We’re the official photographers and we cover both the races and the social life, so one of the dues we have is to produce miscellanea pictures portraiting the venue, the main actors and the people behind the scenes.

While roaming around looking for an image to satisfy the press office requests I ran in this sight. I realized some shots, with a competitor enterning, spinning, sliding stopping and exiting the arena and when back for selection, I cropped a wide angle (12mm) picture to this panoramic version of the empty arena that was later selected as leede for the homepage of the event’s website. Here’s the shot. More are available on the website’s gallery.

As usual, for western riding pictures, all images are credited as “Andrea Bonaga – andreabonaga.it”.

From Plan to Progress – Video out NOW!

admin — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 20:50:01 +0000

Today Stanga published on his Vimeo the final edit of the video of the song “Ink Stains and Incidents” by From Plan to Progress. Here’s the video (I’m protesting right now for the missing credits)