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The Florence Session n.1: Light, Music, and Film in a Renaissance Palace

(First Session with Aurora)

Date: January 20, 2025

Some shoots begin long before the first frame is exposed.This one began in my mind days earlier, when I stepped into the Renaissance palace in the heart of Florence that would become our location. The moment I crossed its heavy wooden doors, the air changed. Time slowed. Light shifted direction. The silence of centuries filled the hallways. And I knew — before even meeting Aurora in front of the camera — that this would be a session shaped by atmosphere, not by concept.By the building itself.
By its rooms, its history, its gravity. This was the first of two shoots with Aurora, an extraordinary model and a refined musician — the kind of person who carries rhythm even when she stands perfectly still. Her presence in that vast palace was like a musical note held in suspension.

Pentax 67II - SMC Takumar 105mm - Fuji NPH 400 pushed to 800 iso - film Processed in C-41 standard
Scan from neg - © Niccolò Barone - All rights reserved

A Renaissance Palace That Breathes Light

The location was more than a backdrop — it was a protagonist. Large frescoed rooms, ceilings so high they felt like sky, ornate marble floors, antique furniture collected from around the world, shelves filled with objects whose stories no one could fully trace.And above all, the windows: enormous Renaissance frames through which the daytime light flooded, spilling across the rooms like water. Florence has a way of amplifying light. It doesn’t just illuminate — it sculpts. The palace magnified this gift: every shadow was soft, every reflection took on the patina of centuries. Walking through the rooms with Aurora felt like moving through chapters of a forgotten novel.

Both: Pentax 67II - SMC Takumar 105mm - Fuji NPH 400 pushed to 800 iso - film Processed in C-41 standard
Scan from neg - © Niccolò Barone - All rights reserved

Aurora: A Quiet Force

Aurora arrived carrying a violin case, even though she wouldn’t play it.She said she liked having it near — “It keeps me in the right energy.”That made perfect sense. She doesn’t pose; she resonates.She understands rhythm, breath, subtle transitions of posture.She is the kind of model who becomes part of the architecture without losing her presence. In a palace full of echoes, she created silence.

The Tools: Pentax 67II, Leica Minilux, Nikon FM, and the Holga 6×6

Although the session revolved mainly around the Pentax 67II with the 105mm Takumar, I carried a small constellation of cameras with me.Each one spoke a different visual language, and the palace deserved all of them.

Pentax 67II + Takumar 105mm f/2.4

The main instrument.The 6×7 negative absorbed the expansive rooms like lungs taking air.With the 105mm, Aurora’s quiet gestures gained sculptural precision.It’s a lens that turns atmosphere into flesh — especially in soft Florence light.

Leica Minilux

For the in-between moments.The Minilux sees the world with delicate clarity.With it, I caught Aurora walking between rooms, touching a column, adjusting her hair near an old mirror with a chipped silver frame.

Nikon FM + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4

Sharp, immediate, honest.Perfect for contrast against the velvet softness of medium format. I used it when the light became more directional near a room on the east side — the morning sun was hitting the wall like a spotlight.

Holga 6×6

The wild card.Unpredictable, blurry, magical.The Holga transformed the Renaissance palace into a dream.Some of my favorite images from the session come from it — silhouettes of Aurora framed by massive windows, rendered in a haze of plastic-lens imperfection.

Film Stocks: A Palette of Time

I wanted a mix of emotional registers, so I used both color and black & white film:

Kodak Portra 400

For the warmth of the frescoes, the color of aged wood, Aurora’s skin tones.Portra thrives in soft, generous light — and Florence gave us exactly that.

Fuji NH400

Cooler, more clinical, but perfect for the marble textures and the bluish shadows of the interior hallways.

Kodak TMAX 400

My anchor.It cuts through the decorative grandeur and finds the person inside the space.TMAX gave us the emotional backbone of the shoot: portraits that feel timeless, as if they could have been taken in 1950 or yesterday. Each film stock translated the palace in a different dialect.

Pentax 67II - SMC Takumar 105mm - Fuji NPH 400 pushed to 800 iso - film Processed in C-41 standard
Scan from neg - © Niccolò Barone - All rights reserved

A Story Made of Rooms

We moved slowly, as the palace demanded.

The Fresco Room

Aurora stood beneath a painted mythological scene. Her white dress echoed the muted palette of the walls. The 105mm Takumar turned her into a living echo of the figures above her.

The Music Room

Not officially a music room, but one with astonishing acoustics. Aurora hummed softly, and the sound expanded like light. I shot with the Nikon FM here — the grain of TMAX danced with the shadows.

The Window Hall

A corridor of gigantic windows. The Holga came alive.The overexposure turned Aurora into a silhouette, a figure made of brightness.

The Library

A room cluttered with objects from Asia, Africa, South America.Masks, maps, wooden boxes, old globes.Portra 400 captured the palette perfectly.Aurora reached toward a mask on the wall — not touching, just acknowledging — and the Pentax 67II created one of the most compelling frames of the entire day.

A Shoot that Felt Like a Dialogue

This session was not just a photographic exercise — it was a conversation: between Aurora and the spacebetween light and silencebetween analog slowness and Renaissance grandeurbetween my present craft and my long history with film Florence is a city that always invites reflection.This shoot felt like a moment suspended between eras — where the cameras, the film, the palace, and Aurora’s musical presence all contributed to a single visual symphony.

Conclusion: The First Movement

This was only the first of two sessions with Aurora.
Yet already, the palace had given us a universe of images — intimate, architectural, musical, and emotional.

Photographing with Pentax 67II, Leica Minilux, Nikon FM, and Holga 6×6 across Portra 400, Fuji NH400, and Kodak TMAX 400 allowed me to capture not just a model, but a dialogue between body and space.

Aurora didn’t pose in the palace.
She belonged to it.
And the palace, in turn, became part of her.

© Niccolò Barone - All rights reserved

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