About me

Welcome,

my name is Valerio and I am, among several other things, a music photographer based in UK. My pictures appear here, there and wherever people wants them. On the web, on some magazines, even framed hanging on some walls. Someone recently thought I am among the music photographers you need to know, which is quite flattering.
If you want any of my photos, all you have to do is contact me or if it is one of those I selected for my Portfolio, you can order them online.

I also enjoy writing about music, so I often complete the images with articles, which helps to spread them to wider audiences. This blog in the years added about a band a week and has now over 200 bands reviewed and photographed. You can browse them from here or simply google the name of your heroes + 35mm you might be lucky. I also add a tip on concert photography at the end of each post. Which means I wrote about 200 suggestion to improve your concert photos. You’re free to browse these too, here.

To differentiate and complicate my life, in this digital world, I started photographing artists using a couple of heavy, old, manual cameras loaded with rolls of 35mm black & white film. Yes, those silver halide emulsions posed on acetate that allow only 36 frames; that need to be carefully handled, developed, fixed, printed in a lightproof darkroom using smelly eco-unfriendly chemicals. All of this to get to a monochrome image, in an era where on digital cameras the same can be seen instantaneously, sent wireless and printed in seconds, eventually in splendid colours.

That must sound quite a serious form of self-harm. It was!
After about 7 years of nights spent in the darkroom I had to gave up, sadly. So the first part of this blog from 2007 to 2009, contains only monochrome images of artists shot on 35mm film, the other half, from 2010 to today is on digital.

Everything started at the end of the century, those days I could still see few photographers loading films, probably as frequent as seeing someone putting a CD in a portable player today, you know it is not going to last, I knew it wasn’t. Digital era moved so fast that I have been for a long time the only one left with 35mm boxes in the pit. I also was the last one swearing f… word (an the many colorful Italian alternatives) the many times the roll ends when the best moment finally arrives. Around me digital equipped troops enjoy the images on colorful displays and showing hundreds shots to friends and young fans.

I tend to convince myself I must be seen as a mixture of romantic-naive-retro’ sort of person but, judging from the way people stare at me when I open the back of the camera, I must probably look like someone landed from a remote, primitive planet. And I adapted.

Reflecting on this I concluded that, quite possibly, I still own the biggest archive of contemporary live music on B&W film. Together with the digital I have live portraits for more than 500 bands.

Being the kind of person who can’t relax watching TV, I thought that when I have something unpublished, curious, that fits with me, I will put down few words and some old-fashion grainy images of modern music to share with you. Bookmark this site, follow me on Facebook or Twitter or sign up to the newsletter to receive updates. Most important, don’t be shy to comment.

Thank you
Valerio

PS-a last, important thing, if you are interested in any of the images you see, please contact me, blogs are open discussion, don’t steal anyone photos online, beyond your monitor, there are people and I am happy to discuss your needs.