Engineer by trade, photographer since I was fourteen.

I started at fourteen, developing film and printing black and white in a makeshift darkroom in my parents’ bathroom in Turin. Mostly people and landscapes. That first year, a photograph of trees in the fog won a prize at a school exhibition. A small prize, but it planted the idea that I might have an eye for this.

Then came a career in engineering, a doctorate, thirty years in the railway industry, and three children. The camera never went away, but it had to make do with holidays and birthdays.

In 2010, when the youngest was old enough to leave me an evening or two, I bought a proper camera and started taking it seriously. I studied portraiture, bought flashes and backdrops and reflectors, rented a studio, and practised on anyone who would sit still: colleagues, friends, friends of friends. It was supposed to be a hobby.

Word got around. Baby shoots, family portraits, christenings and weddings, then conferences and corporate headshots, and later concerts and restaurants. Sixteen years later I am still an engineer from Monday to Friday, and a photographer for most of what is left.

I registered the business in 2024, when the favours had turned into bookings and it stopped being honest to call it a hobby. The camera came fourteen years before the invoice, which is probably the right way round.