Musician by training and lifetime long photographer, I am Certified by Leica and Formatt-Hitech Featured Artist, as well as Qualified Associate of the British Institute of Professional Photography (ABIPP) and European Photographer (EP). Starting April 2018, I am Artistic Director of “The Art of Landscape”, a joint project with ImagOrbetello Photography Festival dedicated to Fine Art landscape photography.

During a two-decades long career as a solo artist in classical music, in the early 2000’s I started working as a professional photographer, photographing mostly musicians, from classical to rock and pop stars, and actors. My work has been published by Rolling Stones, Cosmo, Trendsetter and Abitare among others. As well, while living in Istanbul I worked intensely with street photography, and thanks to this work I got my first solo exhibitions, in Italy, Turkey and Finland.

Since 2010, I moved for good from interpreting a musical score to interpreting the world’s most spectacular landscapes through my camera: combining my lifelong passion for photography with my love for nature and the wilderness, I decided to dedicate myself exclusively to Fine Art landscape photography. Since then, my Fine Art work has been published and exhibited internationally and is part of various private collections.

With 25 years of teaching on my back, I firmly believe that Workshops are the best way to share my enthusiasm for photography and for the Earth’s beauty with like-minded people. My favourite destinations are Iceland, Scotland, Spain, England, the American Southwest, Turkey and, of course, Italy where I settled in 2014 after living 15 years abroad.

When I am not around the world photographing, teaching Workshops, lecturing or adjudicating competitions, I work on my photographs, prepare my Fine Art prints and write reviews and articles about photography. Most of all, I keep studying photography every day, amazed by what I still have to learn. Read Less

Passionate about the Earth and its beauty since I can remember, through the photographic medium I aim to transmit with my images the emotions that a place and a moment in time awaken in me, rather than its mere documentary aspect which, for me, holds no interest at all. From the grand landscapes to the smaller details to the action of nature on man-made artefacts, wherever I find something that inspires me I stop and carefully study the scene in front of me. Finally, I take out my camera and begin to photograph: that’s what constantly motivates and moves me to continue along my path of photographic search.

I strongly believe that a photograph cannot express anything without an artistic vision to inspire it. However, even the strongest of visions cannot be expressed at all without the support of a solid photographic technique. I enjoy every step of the photographic process, from capture to editing and printing. Nowadays, we live attacked by millions of images, most of which have an average lifespan of a few seconds on a digital screen: personally, I think that a photograph really comes alive only when printed. It’s only when looking at a strong, intense and powerful image, printed painting-like on a heavy, slightly textured sheet of photographic paper, that I know I have succeeded in recreating the emotions that a scene awoke in me.

Vieri Bottazzini, July 2018 Read Less