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Massimo Leotardi

I was born in central Italy and have been an artist all my life. My profession brought me to the UK 35 years ago to work as a banknote designer and watermark engraver. Although retired, I still run a watermark engraving course at the Paper Museum in Basel Switzerland. I live now in the northwest of England, with my wife Jacqueline. This North West location gives me fairly easy access to the Peak District, Snowdonia National Park, and the Lake District and I've also got quite a  few local woodlands that I visit regularly, (like Delamere and Macclesfield Forest). Nowadays my passion is photography.

massimoleotardilandscapephotography.com

My aim in photography is to catch original and atmospheric compositions. I have been an artist all my life, and for me, the camera is my brush and my pencil. I portray what I see the way I see it. My photography represents a crossover between a photograph and a painting. My composition is based not just on the subject itself, but mainly on the negative spaces that form the image, following the Japanese aesthetic concept of "ma" ('the space in-between').

Ninety per cent of my images get taken during rainy days when the atmosphere is most conducive to my style. I find the sound of the woodlands in these conditions an essential element to convey the attention to a specific view.

My post-process is based on a painterly style, using mainly subtle local adjustments with emphasis on the light and shade, color contrast, and a special tri-dimensional process that I manually apply in Photoshop to take the image and its details back as I saw them in the first place.

I avoid shooting popular famous places and prefer to challenge myself to find compositions that other photographers just ignore. Living in the North West England, the Peak District is one of my favorite destinations. As this is a very prolific area for many photographers, it is difficult to compose an original shot, but at the same time this is what makes it interesting for me. One of the most frequented places in the Peak District is Padley Gorge and the surrounded area (image 2 and 3).