Chatting with Nico Chiapperini

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I am an Italian engineer who moved to The Netherlands several years ago for work. I take pictures in my free limited time, but I am a photographer all the time.

How did you get interested in photography?

After my degree, I got a digital compact camera as a present from some friends of mine. I started bringing my camera with me everywhere and took pictures of everything.

Who are some of your favorite classic photographers, and how did they influence you?

There are so many, really so many. I could mention just some of them, as Saul Leiter, Richard Kalvar, Robert Frank, William Eggleston and the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri.
They all influenced me in many different ways.

What first drew you to photography and how did you discover it?

When I was eight years old, I took some pictures of fake dinosaurs with my father’s camera, during a school trip. I used two rolls of film and later my dad complained about the waste of money.
It was a trauma, I did not touch again a camera for a very long period.
As mentioned before, I had to wait until the day of my graduation in Aerospace Engineering to get my first personal camera. It was digital, so I did not have anymore the nightmare of limited budget due to the cost of film.

How do you educate to take better photos?

Reading photographic books and chatting with good photographers and editors.

How do you come up with ideas for your projects?

I come up with ideas from my everyday life, this basically means from everywhere. I am a recorder with unlimited tape. I absorb what I read, what I see and hear all around me. Then I mix everything with my feelings unconsciously and inspiration arrives, soon or later, not on call unfortunately.

Do you take photos more for yourself or for others?

I would say most of the time for myself, since even when I took pictures for others, in the end they are for me.

What do you think makes a memorable photograph?

A photograph is memorable if you see it several times and every time it does not stop whispering to you.

How important is an awesome website for your business?

It depends by what “awesome website” means. For me it means simple and minimal: people need to surf easily the contents and enjoy the pictures without many distractions.

How has social media played a role in your photography?

They help me to share my works and make myself known. But nowadays the temptation to please everyone is big and the risk to lose your path very high: the number of Likes is not proportional to the quality of your works and sometime these feedbacks are not honest.