“I always had a passion for photography, but everything clicked together when I brought this camera with only the 50mm with me on a trip to Tokyo in 2018,” Photographer Lorenzo Andriani tells us in an interview. “The amount of joy and happiness that experience gave me was unbelievable, I loved it so much that from that point onwards, I was fully committed to dedicate most of my free time to photography.” He says this, despite originally buying a camera to make YouTube videos. From there, he went on to win a contest — and the confidence boost propelled him forward.
All images by Lorenzo Andriani. Used with permission. Be sure to follow him on Instagram.
Lorenzo uses various cameras. For work, he reaches for the Olympus EM1 Mk II, EM5 Mk III, Zuiko 12/40mm f2.8 Pro, Zuiko 17mm f1.2 Pro, and Zuiko 45mm f1.8. It’s also what he uses when he does storm and astrophotography. He likes the computational photography functions — which allow him to make these storm photos. Indeed, the Live Composite mode is quite fun for this.
For fun, he reaches for a Nikon D800 and a Leica M8.
He switched over from Sony to Olympus in 2020. When COVID arrived, he tried to find a way to have some fun with his camera. Living in a small rural town in the north of Italy with 3,000 people, that’s kind of hard. “Basically, it’s not easy doing street photography here, or any kind of photography that includes people, so at some point I decided to focus on landscapes and meteorological events,” he tells us. I decided to make the most out of where I was. That’s when I started to use the Live composite function, mostly for Star trails in the beginning.” When the summer hit, he tried it with thunderstorms and fell in love.
Admittedly, he didn’t like his first thunderstorm photos. But as time went on, he learned how to make his photos even better. Indeed, the quality of his work improved, and he got lots of positive feedback.
When he shoots these scenes, he goes into them with zero expectations. Instead, he chooses his compositions based on the positions of the lightning. His sequences are not longer than 10 minutes. To clarify on how this works, Olympus and OM System cameras have you choose a reference photo. From there, using the Live Composite function, it builds things onto that scene as it takes more photos over and over. If Lorenzo isn’t getting a final image he likes, he changes the camera angle or something like that.
Of course, OM System’s cameras are also incredibly well weather resistant. Lorenzo typically tends to underexpose the first image to get more contrast when the first lightning bolt hits.
For Lorenzo, he thinks it’s mostly luck and being in the right place at the right time. His work is so important because it doesn’t really involve using AI imagery. But Lorenzo thinks that AI will start to have a very important role in photography — specifically in the cameras themselves. In editing, he thinks that what you can do using AI is pretty incredible. But artistically, he doesn’t think it’s in the same field as photography.
“As I’ve learned during my first trip with a camera, what makes photography special is the process,” he tells us. “Walking, looking, the feeling, understanding light, composition, etc. Maybe in the future big companies will start relying on AI more and more often, but I’m pretty sure photography will always be relevant and in good hands.”