Interview with Matteo Mescalchin
Head Photographer at digitalmovie.it Matteo works passionately with light across photography and videography continuously developing his style and experimenting on new techniques.
Designer Interview
20 April 2016
I’ve been developing a passion for captured images since the early days of my childhood. At the time I guess I was 5 or 6 years old, my daddy had one of those big cameras with a tethered recorder unit he kept hanging on his shoulder.. well I remember spending hours playing with the camera within the range of the cable as I couldn’t drag around the heavy unit. Years went by and I’ve been playing a lot with all following devices seeing countless of different camera models. Today I still love the way you can see things in a different way when looking through the lens. It's funny to see how I shoot tethered to a computer today. It's a nice image reminding me how I am connected with my past experiences.
My studio was founded in 1997 when I decided to build it from scratch with my brother Andrea. We went through many different works over almost 20 years of experience in the field. Since the early days however digitalmovie.it had an open eye on action and sport media productions developing an extensive experience in underwater photography. We like to keep exploring on new technologies available in our filed and we love to extend our range of services on selected extreme areas like deep underwater or full-manned aerial photography.
My design is all about lighting. ‘I work with light, my photography is the format I delivery my work on’
I love creating images that live up to the hype as they portrait high end products.
My favorite lighting technology is strobe light. I feel pretty comfortable managing multi strobe lighting set up and I truly love the wider range of options strobes do offer to my creativity compared to continuous and 'visible' light. Strobe light is more likely to be shaped, modeled, controlled. It's a powerful and hi-precision tool to my photography.
Whenever I feel free to early envision the picture I’m after. Imagination is my first step into good photography.
Lighting, no doubts.
Magic, adventure, expectation, exploration, fulfillment, mystery, surprise.
It’s a mix of visual elements and most of all a good balance of them all together.
I think the main responsibility of a commercial photographer is to honestly contribute into the product’s marketing.
As photographer I expose myself to Nature’s beauty as much as possible observing light and how that performs and behaves and changes in Nature. Artificial lighting is like acquiring Nature’s single words as a visual language and formulate your own new sentences afterwards.
Although being it on constant development, my lighting and image style is based on accurate light control. I love sharp detail, shadows, light occlusion, light pools, light accents. I truly love how different lighting leads to different feelings and play with it.
My homeland is Italy. The most valuable cultural heritage my country gave to me is the sense of hand making craftsmanship.
I’ve built a team working with me. We all know the workflow and we all follow some ‘standard procedures’ in making our job when shooting an image. This way we are all on the same page all the time. That’s essential for high end quality results and high precision image making. On the other hand my creativity must be unleashed. This means I can ‘imagine’ to put a light ‘up there’ and know my team will do whatever possible to have it done in time. Being able to effectively communicate with my team is among key points for my success.
Smile, enjoy working hard while playing with my favorite toys, smile again. Than dive underwater, fly myself up in the sky and enjoy family on extra time.
Beside not to give up on their style and goals, the best advice I can give to young photographers is to spend the first few minutes available on set observing their subject. You need to love your subject to some extent. The best piece of advice someone has ever given to me is ‘don't underestimate the power of strobe lights’ This sounded like a ‘jedi’ advice to me at that time…
My golden rule is ‘picture it in mind first’
I’ve never seen a well designed lighting being defeated by the best lucky shot among those made purely ‘by chance’. Of course you can run into lucky days, but I wouldn’t build my career on those.
I’ve never seen a well designed lighting being defeated by the best lucky shot among those made purely ‘by chance’. Of course you can run into lucky days, but I wouldn’t build my career on those.
My tool box is filled with a nice range of lighting modifiers and light control tools. I love Chimera Lighting modifiers as I truly love how they shape light. Than Lighttools grids are my finest paint brushes. The best camera on the market can’t do that much on a creepy lit scene. Lights are my tools, cameras are an important section of the pipeline. The better the camera, the better my work will be delivered to clients. I usually shoot on Hasselblad digital medium format however and I love it.
Time is essential indeed. I manage time building the best workflow possible with my team members. Time is always a key factor when client is paying for all crew, location, makeup and so on… I do take some time to experiment on new things and techniques during training sessions with my team or on self assigned project.
‘oh.. that picture is nice, I like it! By the way… how did you do that?’ :-)
As crazy as it might sound… my most important job experience is: my everyday job. I build up my long term experience on a daily basis.
Ambitions are to have access to international and bigger projects on commercial photography.
Envision it as a soul, work as a team.
People can get in touch e-mailing me at matteo@digitalmovie.it
Thank you.
Thank you.
I’d like to thanks my brother Andrea taking care of production, accounting, project coordinator, and valuable business partner for his work and support at digitalmovie.it. Thanks to all my team members at digitalmovie.it