Shooting at the Ends of the Earth – Simone Zanoli's Lapland Adventure with the Lomo'Instant Automat Glass!

Being surrounded by lakes, falls, forests and vast open landscapes in nature has a therapeutic and transformational effect: Simone Zanoli is not new about to tell us more his trip with our Lomo'Instant automat Glass but this time he went to Lapland where the temperature is around -25 degrees and shoot pictures is not so easy!

Hey Simone. How are you? What have you been up to lately?

Hi everyone, I’m fine, it’s always a pleasure to be here with you talking about my trips. I have just returned from my arctic world, more precisely from Finnish Lapland where I spent 12 unforgettable days in the area of Levi.

Being surrounded by lakes, fells, forests and vast open landscapes in nature has a therapeutic and transformational effect. Tell us more about your trip and your feelings.

I’m an architect and my life is truly chaotic, always all in a hurry with urgent deadlines and especially in December, in the days before Christmas, the word madness was on my daily agenda. So for my mental well-being, I need to run away from all this chaos and in the arctic, I always find my peace. This time I choose Lapland and I choose it for several reasons: for the silence, for the forests, for the cold(the real one), for the northern lights but also because I already had in mind this trip since the last year. I had already been to Lapland a few years ago in summer and I was completely in love with it, so my desire to experience this place during the winter was so strong that I need to come back.

It must have been wonderful to be there, can you speak about your experience by telling something about the thoughts behind your shots?

Yes, wonderful is the perfect word. Usually, I don’t think too much before the shot, if I feel something I take the camera and I take the picture. But here in Lapland, in winter with a temperature around -25 degrees was impossible don’t study the shots. It was a really hard challenge and I never lost so many pictures on a trip. The cold paralyze my hands (I could not take a picture with my mittens) and paralyze the camera. It was so cold that the snapshots got stuck inside the camera ruining the picture. It was also winter and in Lapland, the sun never rises, there is only a blue light for three, maybe four hours during the day. So I was without light and with the camera that works only if it was warm; this was really challenging because I had only a few seconds for deciding the shot, take the camera doing my mirror trick and hope that the snapshot comes out.

Combining different subjects into one photo, you create new scenery that sparks the imagination. Tell us more about how to create awesome multiple exposures

I really love to push the limit of analogic photography. Thanks to a special accessory, the splitzer, I can realize this weird mirror multiple exposures. I combine the movement of the camera with the movement of the splitzer for creating a sort of mirror effect in my snapshot. I did hundreds of experiments before reach my actual level, but I’m still in an experimental phase.

What should someone keep in mind before shooting with the Lomo'Instant automat Glass in Lapland?Any advice for young artists out there?

The lesson that I learn from this trip is that you need always to understand the place where you are and understand how many lights do you have because, especially in analogic, it’s all about light. You need to play and to do a lot of experiments with the Lomo Instant Automat Glass before understand it at 100%, so play, don’t think and shoot.

Are there any upcoming projects where you would like to use it again?

I have something really big in mind for this summer. An incredible solo adventure, but it is too soon now to reveal my plan. But the Lomo'Instant automat Glass will be always with me.

To know more about Simone and discover his other photographs, go on his Instagram. If you are curious about his project you can find more Instantnomad on Instagram

2020-04-27