We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stefano Pellegrini. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stefano below.

Stefano, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright – so having the idea is one thing, but going from idea to execution is where countless people drop the ball. Can you talk to us about your journey from idea to execution?

My most creative pictures are usually born before being on location. An example is my Moonlanding project. I had the idea of recreate the Moon landing, for this reason I handmade an astronaut suit, and I planned the shooting thinking about a location near me that could fake the moon surface. For this reason I went on Dolomites, where the bare rocky landscape, could close the deal. once there i scouted for the perfect spot that could work in terms of framing, and was positioned in the right way under the milkyway. Another similar project was recreate Star Wars scenes in real places. Again i handmade the costumes, and brought a lightsaber, then i had to find the locations. The most crazy one was recreate the duel of Episode III on the erupting volcano in Iceland.

Stefano, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a Landscape Astropotographer from Milan. I like to travel and discover new places, but always with the aim of taking pictures. I dedicate great care to location-scouting with long mountain hikes in search of the perfect spot. I always shot the real night-sky of the subject, planning pictures where the milkyway is co-protagonist of the scene. My mission is to translate what the eyes see and often the camera can’t. Using stacking and combining different exposures, only to reproduce reality in all its art, without fictions and replacements. I like complicate pictures (vertical panoramas bynight, with ligpainting) and creative one, something that through the years gave me a recognizable style.
My most importat work was the campaign for the Artic Vodka launch. For it, I spent more than 4 months going around Italy, to capture sunsets and sunrise on the top of the most iconic italian mountains. All the landscape photography work was unveild in the event for the launch of the new bottle. The peak of the event was my speech with the ILLVA Marketing manager. We talked about innovation and Italian craftsmanship, and of course about mountains and photography.
Also, In the last years I decided to make video tutorials and provide one-to-one lession, to help to understand my workflow and how to do the things I do. (you can find them on my website https://www.pels.it/photo/form/videoENG.html)

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I love to shoot in the mountains and I love to shoot in the winter. This can be sometime dangerous. A couple of time I had to fight with deep snow or strong wind that menaced the result of the shooting session. One January on Dolomites I had the idea of making an hike and shoot my little tent lost among the huge rocks with the complete arch above. The only problem was that, while shooting, the wind started to rise, and it became so strong that it flew the tent away despite the 25kg backpack acting as a ballast and the two ice-axes planted in the snow to hold it back! Due to the wind the carbon poles that hold it together broke, and in order to be able to use it at night I had to tape them back together. On the other hand I had an incredible clear sky that gave me the opportunity to frame all the nebula of the winter arch, without a star tracker (that I didn’t used because of the condition).

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My most important goal is to be always faithful to myself, my vision and my heart. For this reason I prefer not to work with brands or on projects that are not totally aligned with me: I prefer to work less but maintain total control of my creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pels.it/photo
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/pels_photo
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/pelle89
• Other: www.behance.net/Pelle89

Image Credits
All photos were taken by me.