Silhouette Photography
| Last Updated: May 29, 2014
In this showcase series we feature the Italian street photography of Eolo Perfido.
Eolo introduced himself to Photophique:
My name Eolo Perfido, I am 42 years old and photographer since I was 28. I own a commercial photographic studio specialized in Advertising and Editorial Photography.
About 10 years ago I started taking Street Photography and from 2013 I became a Street Photography teacher for Leica Akademie in Italy.
I am self taught, but i had the opportunity to work as an assistant for many years and assignments of Steve McCurry. I also assisted on several shootings Elliott Erwitt, James Nachtwey and Eugene Richards. it’s been such and important training moment for me.
Can you tell us more about this street photography series?
The passion for Street Photography started quite slowly in the beginning. The first few years I shot very rarely. A session every two or three weeks. Now I go out with the camera around my neck almost every day and do the longer sessions two or three times per week.
The first few times I told myself that I was well away from work in Studio Photography and that allowed me to go out and reset my mind to get off some stress.Today I can not help it. Without a camera around my neck I feel a sense of discomfort.
I also think that Street Photography is of all the photographic disciplines one of the most comprehensive and useful to develop the ability to take pictures in any situation. Regardless of the photographic genre played for passion or profession, I always recommend to my students and colleagues to deal with street photography as a tool for growth.
I’ve been shooting in many countries but after many years I still love to take pictures in Italy that is such an incredible country with so many different people and cultures. There are differences between the northern cities where people are more secretive and those in the south where you will also feel the Latin heat in the response of the people being photographed.
Rome being exactly halfway is a city where you never know what to expect. Contact with people is probably what drives my passion for Street Photography right now. Every walk could be very different from the previous one and this makes my life less boring.
And my attitude with people is definitely related to my daily mood. There are days when I feel good and full of energy and I get closer to the subjects, while other days when I feel insecure, I keep a certain distance and try to work less on human nature and more on geometry and light.
What equipment did you use for this series?
Since I’m walking many hours as you can imagine I like to stay light. A camera, two lenses and a notepad to get some notes. At the time shooting my Street Photography with the Leica M Type 240 and two lenses. The Elmarit -M 1:2.8 / 28mm ASPH and the LEICA SUMMICRON -M 35mm f / 2 ASPH.
I worked for many years with the 35mm but a few months ago I fell in love 28mm. Forces me to get closer to people and I like that a lot. I do not love the neck strap and I have recently started using a shoulder strap from Black Rapid. I do the basic process and archive all my images with Adobe Lightroom.
When I need more control, I move to Photoshop. For Black and White I use Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. I’m processing my files with a lot of attention to details. I’ve been retouching many color files for Steve McCurry and done several digital black and white process for James Natchwey, learning from them how to take care of many aspects and details. In Silver Efex I often subdivide my images in many zones to try to control every single highlight and shadows.
You can see more of Eolo’s work via eoloperfido.com or walkingphotographer.net. You can also connect with him via Twitter and Facebook.
Photophique has express permission to publish these images and Eolo Perfido retains full copyright to all photographs featured in this Italian street photography series.
