A Surf Photographer From Italy by Tommaso Pardini
A surf photographer from Italy?
Sounds strange yes, I agree. But this is my story.
My name is Tommaso, I am 28 years old and I come from Forte dei Marmi, a small town by the sea in Tuscany that was in the 80s one of the birthplace of surfing in Italy.
Since I was a child I have had a passion for photography and surfing. I remember that before every school trip I forced my mother to buy me a disposable camera and I often stole my grandfather's 35mm to play.
However, I realized my love of photography much later.
In 2012 I moved to London for work. While I was running, I often voluntarily lost myself to explore the city better and started taking pictures. Back home, during the summer, quiksilver hosted a competition at my city pier. Some of my surfer friends lent me a camera and asked me to take some photos. I always surfed, but I liked being behind the camera and telling a story.
Few months later I decided to buy myself a second-hand camera, an old Canon EOS300D, it was broken and worked only in manual mode, I was used to shot in automatic, so I had to learn everything about real photography and started studying through YouTube tutorials.
The luck of meeting some of the best surfers in the area has helped me a lot to grow, with time, I’ve started shooting from the water, but unfortunately I was doing a full-time job and I could never travel or dedicate much time to my passion. I had to settle for the few waves it made at home and this slowed my growth a lot.
In 2018 I decided to quit and change my life, a sacrifice that fortunately, thanks also to the savings I had, has led me to travel a lot in the last two years.
I visited some of the best places in Europe and was lucky enough to take photos of some of the strongest surfers in the world, collaborating with international brands and magazines.
Lately I had decided to focus more on making videos to tell more about surfing in my country but unfortunately this virus has forced us home.
The positive thing about this forced quarantine is that we have that time that we never had before, I am using it to learn and study new things. When the quarantine is over, surely we would have learned to appreciate time, the most precious thing we have and to which we too often do not give importance. I want to thanks also one of my main supporter, The Silted Company, a clothing brand made in Italy that, as many of Italian industries, is facing hard times due to the lockdown.
Much love to all of the world from Italy, stay Safe and get ready to be in the water soon.
