Maurizio Biancarelli is a professional nature photographer; he works with the most important national and foreign photography magazines like National Geographic Italy, Bell’Italia, Bell’Europa, BBC Wildlife, Naturfoto, Terre Sauvage, Terra, Meridiani Montagne, In Viaggio and Qui Touring. He exhibited in prestigious European locations (like in the European Parliament in Strasburg) and his pictures have been awarded on the major international contests like Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year, GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
He was member of the jury in contests as Asferico and GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year, he took part in the team selected for the pan-european project Wild wonder of Europe. He is taking part to the important project L’Altroversante that’s entirely dedicated to the Italian mountain landscape.
The friendship and cooperation with Photonica3 have been consolidated along the time through workshops, conferences and exhibitions that received a great attendance and a wide success. Competence and professionalism makes Maurizio an absolute reference point in the international nature photography scene.
Photonica3
Living the experience
Everything started around the late 1950s, during my happy and peaceful childhood that I spent in the countryside with my mates in full contact with a generous nature; this remote, quiet and slow world didn’t let our kids eyes foresee the deep change that in a short time would have badly upset the landscape and the life style of everyone. We played on the fields, went for a swim in Chiascio river, that’s our river, met wildlife and we recognized birds from their twittering. We did all this spontaneously just pushed from the simple curiosity for the surrounding world as is normal for young minds. This interest for nature has never weakened from a young age, at the contrary it acquired a new shape because it became more conscious, mature and it naturally joined photography.
I have been a photographer for 30 years and since the beginning I experienced photography as an extraordinary way to analyse and share what I have felt in living in nature. The location doesn’t matter, can be on Appennini mountains that are my roots, or northern countries, that are my preferred. Everywhere I am first of all I try to understand the environment’s characteristics and try to recognize all the details like the kind of flora, the kind of wildlife, the climate and any other aspect that can let me get in touch better with this natural landscape and his inhabitants.
This is a step I consider essential to approach the nature complexity that’s made of an intricate network of relations between the living being and the ecosystem they live on. Succeed in establishing a deep empathy relationship with the environment you are going to capture is the real aim to pursue and to achieve it you need qualities that seem to be not very trendy in today’s world: humility, perseverance, true commitment and respect for any form of life. The path to success is full of unavoidable failures, sometimes even reiterated, and only who can be beyond the consequent frustrations can achieve the set proposed result.
This is the essential condition to produce images that can pass a message, tell stories, let you feel our love and our strong connection with the subject of our pictures. I think that, today as in the past, the nature I am experiencing is the true aim of my research, photography comes after and if it’s late let’s have patience, the experience is already enough reward and it enriches me. But I feel that today too often people are looking for shortcuts to stand out at any cost, we live in a world submerged by images where photography is always getting more competitive and frenetic. This can let you lose focus on what I think should be the ultimate aim for every photographer who is looking into nature in order to find his source of inspiration and that should find in nature full gratification.
