Introduction - My Micro Adventure

Here I am,

It’s a kind of a bit of introduction that starts with a micro-adventure, as I like to call it.

The reality is that it was just a little walk of two to three hours in Dublin’s Countryside.

Anyway, I’m Mattia, a professional photographer, Italian who has been living in Dublin, Ireland, for almost a decade.

Between 2020 and 2021, I was stuck in the country, I couldn’t travel for work as I used to, and the last lockdown that we had was the most protracted and most painful for me. I’m talking about a six-month lockdown that went from the end of December 2020 till June 2021.

I was stuck here because of Covid restrictions. If I was travelling for work, I would face quarantine periods in the countries I was travelling to plus, probably the worst one in here, two weeks, self-paid isolation in a hotel designated randomly by the Irish government. Don’t get me wrong. I thought it was the best way to keep people safe, but it made everything more problematic when it came down to work. Companies were not hiring me because of this, and I was terrified that my business would crash. I know I wasn’t the only one in this position, but the worst part was probably the bad mood I was falling into.

To find an escape, I was spending time reading travel books, adventure stories and watching videos. It is here that I believe everything started. I had never had this urge to travel for myself, to make a photography journey. Before the pandemic, when I was travelling, I used to travel to the city/country, having few meetings and scouting the site for the job to suddenly find myself, literally the next day of the photoshoot, in a flight back home or to the next city/job.

Due to restrictions, I knew that I couldn’t go to other countries during the lockdown or travel far from my home (due to limitations). I was only able to read and dream about those adventures.
Then I found a book.
It was talking about micro-adventures. You can take small challenges just out of your doorstep without big budgets and great equipment or experience. This book, micro-adventures by Alastair Humphreys, gave me a new perspective. https://alastairhumphreys.com/microadventures-3/

So, the next day, I plan my very first micro-adventure. It was a simple walk with my camera. I was again curious to discover places and maybe meet new people. Have a quick chat or perhaps just say “Hi there!” to the person crossing my path.
Using the app AllTrails, I re-discover a beautiful walk near town—the Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk. https://visitwicklow.ie/listing/cliff-walk-bray-to-greystones/

I spent time there walking, thinking and taking notes in my journal. As often it can happen in Ireland, I experience the “four seasons in a day”. Sun, wind, rain and even a rainbow along my micro-adventure. Boots were making splashes in puddles, wet leaves smuggling my lenses and smiling people just appreciating the nature of this part of the country.

Free time out there. Free and wet. I was giving myself space to reconsider my photography approach and how I would transform it in the future. It’s not something that happens in a few days or a month, but a start is a start, and I was excited about it.

I stopped in some spots to have a better frame for my following pictures and waited for the train to pass, a cloud to come, or the wave to crash. Photography’s quite often a matter of being patient for the right moment, and at the same time, being ready for the snap.

I understood that my photography was always about people. I built my portfolio around my Family album, but maybe I had never had the chance to dig deeper into that concept. To extensively talk with people and perhaps follow them in their life just to document what was going on.

Since then, I have tried to keep that little but insight experience in my mind.
I want to know. I want to be curious and dream my next micro, but indeed, great adventure.

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Feel free to visit my website: https://www.mattiapelizzari.com/

Mattia Pelizzari copyrights all images