Alessio Michelini Photography

Malin Head is most northernly point of the island of Ireland, after this place the next stop is the north pole, and I can confirm that the day we went there, it was absolutely freezing, and we didn't really stay that long, just 15/20 minutes to admire the landscape before starting to realize that we were turning into ice cubes, and it was a week ago, so end of march. In this place, during the WWII, they wrote with stones the world EIRE, and probably is what you would expect to photograph there. I did a few shots, I didn't like them, so I choose to develop the other ones. My friend Alberto will probably be disappointed about that, but I don't publish pictures that a tourist expect to do, but I publish the pictures I like, regarding their meaning or whatever is the subject. So here we are with some of the interesting (or at least for me) pictures I took in that cold, cold place.

Ok, just to make it clear once for all: I'm not talking about the Aran IslandS, the ones in front of Galway, but the Aran Island (no S you see?! It's just one island) also known as Arranmore, in County Donegal.
Anyway, the Aran Island, which is, according to Wikipedia, "the largest inhabited island of County Donegal, and the second largest in all of Ireland". It is a pretty big Island, or at least for irish standards, and if you get there be sure you are with a car or at least with a bike, unless you really, really like to walk.
We visited this island first thing in the morning of the second day of our trip to Donegal, and I have to say that is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't spend more than 3/4 hours in there, as is big but not that big, especially if you are driving.

Unlike most of people I generally like to watch ads, even despite the fact that most of the times the ads on youtube are really annoying, not for the ad itself, but because they show you always the same ad all the fucking times, plus sometimes you cannot even skip it after 5 seconds. But sometimes ads are really good to see, it is a sort of art some times, not always, and actually not that often nowadays, but a few of them are really good, and most of the times are genuine and original ideas. But other times they aren't. In the past few weeks youtube is forcing me to see this ad from Carlsberg, called Spartacus, which you can see down here:

I've been thinking to move to Full Frame from a while now, and I still don't know which camera I should get, a not-that-amazing-but-cheap 6D or a top-notch-camera-but-expensive 5D Mk III. If the budget wasn't a problem, I'll go straight to the 5D, 100% viewfinder coverage, 1/200 of sync speed, plenty of cross-type AF Points, full magnesum alloy body, and so on. But the budget is a problem. Especially because apart the camera, I'll need to buy a good wide lens as well, as my beloved Sigma 10-20mm I use now will not work on a full-frame body, and as a landscape photographer I cannot live without a wide lens.
My wallet says "take the 6D", my hearth says "take the 5D Mk III", my bank says "What about changing hobby? Like doing nothing and give us more money?" my girl says "I don't really care, but what about you buy something to me instead? Like clothes?".
We will see, 6D, 5D Mk III, clothes, it's hard to say what I will buy in the next month or two. In the meanwhile if you have the same problem, you can watch this video from Matt Granger of PhotoNewsReviews which compares the two cameras, hope it helps!

As I mentioned in a previous post, last weekend myself, my girlfriend, and a couple of good friends, we decided to go to the only part of Ireland I've never been before, the wild Donegal! I've been looking to go to this place from years now, but never got a chance, even because it's a place that it takes at least 3 days to visit, you cannot really do it in less time than that. In this post I'll publish only the pictures we take on the first place we visited, which is the amazing Slieve League, which are, according to Wikipedia, the highest sea cliffs in Ireland.
That place is so stunning that it's really hard to describe with words or even pictures, and about this last point, I have to say that it was really hard for me to represent that part of Ireland. I took plenty of pictures, but those pictures look daft and very bland compared to reality, to what the best camera ever made, mortally called "the eyes", can see. And at the end despite the quite big number of shots, I didn't pick that many. Plus when you travel in a group of people, you cannot really spend the hours I would like to take to try to catch the white fly of the (almost) perfect shot, or at least to something that can shows to you the majesty of the nature. But I did my best, and here I hope to show you what I've seen this weekend.
As usual you can find the complete set on my flickr account.

Weeeell, not exactly random, but not sure if put these pictures in the street photography category or something else, anyway I woke up at 7am this morning and drove half thousand kilometers, so I'm not really with a superfresh mind to find a proper title, so get this and be happy.
Anyway, these are some pictures, outside the world of music photography, I took this month, which complete the ones I published a few days ago.
Any comments are welcome, but try to do not be a dick.

P.S.: Expect photos from my weekend in Ulster soon :-)

This morning I woke up, and I saw something amazing: Dublin under snow! While most of dubliners will probably fall in pure terror, as most of irish people don't really handle snow very well (no offence my irish friends, but that's the truth). So in my mind I was already thinking to do some street photography before going to work, dreaming of a desaturated city under a snow storm (yes, I have photoshop in my mind as well), thinking what could be a good exposure to have the right effect, but then I realized that we are on the coast, and snow doesn't really last long here. In fact after 20 minutes, the snow disappear. Big disappointment.
But then I thought: "maybe it will snow again?! Let's bring my camera, with lenses, filters, memories, tripod, lunch in case".
It did snow, but it didn't really stick to the ground. Second big disappointment of the day.
So the day turned from "let's hunt a good shot!" to "fuck off life".
But thank to the crazy irish weather, after some pointless and useless snowfalls, around 6 the sun came out, so I tried to turn what became an useless day to photograph to something interesting, and I went straight to a building that I was thinking to photograph from a while, which is the one with the big Heineken logo in front. I don't think it's owned by Heineken, I think they just paid shit load of money to put their logo on that building, but who cares?
So at the end I brought home 3 shoots, a good one, a quite good one, and one that it's okay, but still better than nothing no?!

I understand that sometimes the closest you get to the action the better it is, but sometimes you have to set to yourself some kind of boundaries, or at least try not to kill yourself for a picture. This guy nearly died to take some pictures of crocodiles, underestimating how these creatures can be so damn letal.

(via FStoppers)

Literally. Until a few weeks ago I had a blog, it was cool (even if I didn't really spent too much time building it as I just downloaded a nice wordpress theme, changed the name, uploaded, done), I wrote loads of articles about photography, did some reviews, etc... but it has only one big issue: it was in Italian. Someone could say "what's the problem bro?!". The problem is that most of my facebook "friends" speak in english, the totality of the videos I published on my blog were in english and I live in Ireland.
So what's the point to make a blog in Italian? There is no point. And this is not a decision that came up on a night, but I was thinking about it from ages, probably years, but due to my poor english, or italenglish, or the pizza accent if you like it this name, I was always worried to write in english.
But now, after 5 years living in here, I think that my english is at least understandable, so it's time to try this "experiment".

So what's this blog about?
This blog will talk about photography, I'll publish some interesting videos I found on the web, I'll talk about the gigs I usually shoot (as you can guess from the site name) by doing a sort of review from a photographer point of view, maybe I'll publish some reviews of the gear I use, and other bollix that photographers like to read.
So I hope you will enjoy reading this blog, and I apologize for the grammar errors, but I'm still learning this bloody language.