Humanitarian with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II in his hands

Do what you love and help others

We bring you a short story on a guy called Carlo Ricci. Carlo is Italian (you already figured that out) professional photographer who started his digital photography in Australia where he lived for 3 years. With his girlfriend/producer he decided to go on an adventure called ‘Long way up’ with ’86 VW van and they drove from the most southern tip of South America all the way up to Vancouver, Canada, where they live and work today. (Here’s a link to a trip blog with some amazing pictures among other)

Along the way they worked for several international NGOs (non-governmental organization) shooting little docu-stories in Peru. There they met an Omprakash US “ambassador” who lives in San Francisco and had an idea about shooting a story of this biker who was just about to start riding the west coast to stop in Universities and spread the world about this Omprakash organization.

They had a week for pre-production and the two of them shot every scene. Carlos says: ‘’Living in the van as well has been the greatest challenge, especially for the riding shots when she was driving the van while I was hanging out of it shooting. I also fell off the van while trying to get the “eye” scene with the van speeding up!’’. It was shot with no budget (only the petrol and food expenses were covered). Movie was entirely shot with EOS Canon 5D Mk II and the voice over was recorded with a Zoom H1 inside the van.

 

We think this must be an amazing experience to be able not only to travel that far but to get to know and generously help ones who need it the most. Carlos didn’t just fell sorry and put a coin in the charity basket – he did much more. He helped the best way he knew – he did movies about it. Movies that will be viewed by thousands and in the end hopefully gain more help that any individual would ever provide.

 

Norma Story

The biggest gratification, by his words, was that one of the stories that they shot and which got noticed by a very big Italian humanitarian organization which is going to take care and charge of the surgery and medical costs for the film protagonist. She’s a little baby who has an imperforate anus and also down syndrome; the family doesn’t even have a toilet. It was a documentary about a local Peruvian organization called Pisco Sin Fronteras.

 

Norma’s Story from Carlo Ricci on Vimeo.

 

Shots in both movies seem to be planned and yet they managed to preserve a documentary style. It’s clear that lot of effort and directory know-how was implemented in these movies. This is a real professional video work by all means. You can both enjoy the beauty and ‘simplicity’ of shots and yet be intrigued and touched by the epilog of the story to be told.

 

Carlo’s equipment consists of:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-70mm f2.8L

Canon EF 50mm f1.4

Tamron 17-35mm f2.8-4

Canon EF 100-300 f5.6

Steadycam FlyCam 2000

Indysystem Compact Rig and pro follow focus

Manfrotto tripod

Zoom H1

 

About Tommy

Photography allows me to be what I want to be, to be where I want to be, and to do what I want to do ... I'm not professional photographer and I don't need a title, I love to take photographs and that is what I do, I love to learn and I always try to do it better ...

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