Love to teach from novice to advanced. Studio or location, personal project guidance and mentorship. From a couple of hours to get the best from your camera to longer packages to deepen your knowledge

Find out more about Stefano

• When did you start practicing? How did this passion find you?

  The first time I picked up a camera, I was 11 years old. It had been a gift for Christmas they year my father had died suddenly. The viewfinder quickly became my window on the world, framing piece by piece what I was prepared to look at. The camera something to hide behind. A few months later, I started working in the darkroom, first processing my own film then printing with an enlarger and my voyage of discovery continued. I was making images that I cared about and wanted to keep safe in time. After a degree at the London College of Printing now UAL, I started working as a professional and became known for my work with children, which led me to commissions for global campaigns for the majority of the fashion brands over the years. It’s fair to say the passion found me but I also fed it and kept it alive so that I now still enjoy framing the world around me into significant and precious moments.

• 2) Which artists or works affect you the most?

  Art history is really one of my favorite subjects, and I am increasingly aware of how knowledge and appreciation for other people's work is not a hindrance to originality, but a great stimulus and inspiration. Recently, I have been enjoying a number of different photographers: Joel Meyerovitz and Luigi Ghirri for street images to Abelardo Morrel and Wolfang Tilmans for their experiments with the medium itself and Abdul Kircher and Alec Soth for their storytelling.

• 3) What are the qualities and skill required to succeed in this area?

  Fishing is not a terrible metaphor for good photography. Both demand patience — the ability to wait, observe, and trust the process. Success often comes only after repeated failures of casting the line or clicking the shutter. Like fishing, photography also requires attention at decisive moments: the care you take in reeling in is also the care you need in timing, and framing as well as editing and safeguarding the final image. On the surface it may seem simple to learn, but mastery comes through embracing its depth complexity and details. In my view, patience and resilience are as important as thinking on your feet and the ability to try new ways at the drop of a hat.

• 4) What is the most valuable advice you can give to help someone stay focused on creative projects?

  I use one percent “story” to people not lose track of a goal and intention. My suggestion is to aim for small incremental improvements or steps to keep at bay the feeling of either failure or underachievement. Persistence and patience as I mentioned above are key as well as flexibility and creativity in redrawing lines in the sand that may not be fully set.

• 5) How would you describe your passion; how does it make you feel?

  The wonderful thing about passion is that it gets you up in the morning way quicker than anything else and will keep you up at night long after the feelings of duty and discipline have left you. Passion, to a point, will keep hunger and thirst at bay and will make learning moments of mistakes.

• 6) What creative achievements are you particularly proud of?

  In terms of my own creativity, I'm proud that later in my career I have been able to rediscover the medium of photography as a powerful poetic voice in me. I use recent photographic projects to understand myself more fully and not worry about their commercial success. My series of empty nests for example, simply photographed on a white background, are metaphors from my own life. My recent exhibition “In cerca della retta via”, titled after the opening line of Dante’s divine Comedy helped me indeed as the title suggests, find a new way for myself.

• 7) Have you ever been surprised by a student; by their ability or quick progression?

  Arber, my first student on Superprof was actually a great source of joy for me. Although he was not initially particularly technically proficient or knowledgeable, I found him quickly perceptive and surprisingly keen to try out new approaches. I was very impressed, after a lesson on storytelling, to see a new edit he made of an old project; he managed to use photography as a language in a way that I had not imagined him able to up until that point and communicated a very personal journey to a music festival and the experience around it.

• 8) Being a Superprof is an art! What is your secret?

  If listening is an art then perhaps I can call myself an artist of listening. Through it I quickly get a sense of the person and their abilities was well as their struggles. More than anything I then enjoy picking up on people's potential and good traits and pushing them to develop through those to the best they can be - which normally surprises us both.