Italian photographer Mauro Fioravanti credits two disparate sources of inspiration for helping him to develop his eye for stunning seascapes: Ansel Adams’ ground-breaking black and white landscape photography, and the colors and compositions of Renaissance paintings. Born and based on the west coast of Italy, he has also found an inexhaustible source of inspiration along the Mediterranean coast. His broad views of bright red sunsets, towering storm clouds and rushing waves capture the incredible serenity of nature without any digital tweaking.
Fioravanti’s photographs combine dynamic activity in the foreground — where blurred waves crash against sharp, scraggly rocks or float over pebble beaches like ghosts — with phenomenally calm, even painterly views across waters to the horizon. He portrays the sea as a dual entity, at once vast, immovable and constant, yet capable of small, quick, elusive movements. A change in brightness often accompanies this shift of scale, with brilliant light in the distance, much like the sea, constantly struggling to reach shore.