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Water, animals and photography
These are the three great passions that, in different time,
have come into my life.
I was born with the attitude of the water element, I’ve practised
apnoea since I was eight and the sea has always been, and still
it is, an irresistible attraction for me. I practised for many
years this discipline and in 1977 I approached the scuba dive
and I got my first water licence. I was fascinated by the emotions
you can feel in an underwater immersion so I attended all kind
of courses in this field and I got certificates of every dive
specialties. Teaching was exciting too. I spent many years teaching
and developing my knowledge as instructor as well as director
of one of the most prestigious diving school in Bologna... I’ve
always had a great interest in animals. I have been curious on
them since I was a child. I collected all kind of book and encyclopaedia
on animal life. I read about everything, from insects to whales
and I spent my spare time observing, studying and recording the
behaviour of this or that animal. The scuba dive gives you the
great opportunities of observing sea animals in their natural
environment so it was inevitable that this has become one of my
major interests...
At the age of twenty here it comes my third interest: photography.
At the beginning I was interested in air sights, I took pictures
of landscapes often of seascapes; however, water was one of my
favourite subjects, then have come animals, and finally the sea
inhabitants. I had the chance to visit many seas of our planet,
some of them are beautiful and awesome but the Mediterranean sea
is, in my opinion, unique. It is often underestimate but it has
an extraordinary variety of life and it has nothing to envy to
the tropical seas. Every year I spend about 200 hours to the underwater
photography and the observation of the sea organisms.
The great passion for animals has pushed me to study the sea life
and to deep my knowledge on their biology and on everything is
possible to catch on the film of the camera. Now I cooperate with the Marine Science Group, a group of research of the Department of Evolutionary and Experimental Biology of University of Bologna, with some magazines and with
some international scuba Agency.
With a dear friend of mine, a photographer, I published three books: the first
(2001) on the hidden environments of the Mediterranean sea, the second (2004) is a guide
on the sea in Toscana, and the last (2007), a phptpgraphic book on the Mediterranean. |