Franco Tulli (Frank)
I was born in Turin on August 2, 1962, but I live and work in Rome from many years.
My dream, when I was a kid, was to become an astronaut to go to the moon and space; I didn’t realized this dream, but I saw in the scuba diving the possibility of at least part of it: to visit the bottom of the sea and the oceans. So in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s I began to discover this magnificent new world, not with a space suit, but with fins, mask and tanks.
For a long time, the desire for travel and new discoveries pushed me to go to many parts of the planet, accompanied by my passion for photography and for the image in all its forms; So it's not long time after taking the first underwater patents, which I bought a camera, the mythical Nikonos III (then replaced by V), in order to bring back what my eyes, full of wonder, saw during the diving.
Of course I realized, soon, that photographing out of the water was not exactly the same thing as photographing immersed in the water while breathing compressed air and trying to maintain a good fit. So before getting acceptable results, much water has passed under the bridges, or rather, several bubbles have surfaced and with great annoyance and economic damage over time, several flooded Nikonos have been replaced.
After Nikonos's "last flood", I decided to switch to more "safe" and "pond" systems and so for a few years I once applied myself to shooting with Sony cameras in Isotta underwater housing and editing underwater movies.
With the advent of digital photography, the desire to resume taking pictures underwater has become even stronger: I started to keep a small compact in my pocket while diving, but go back to having an equipment with a solid underwater housing, two flashes and three headlights, the step was, also this time, very short.
From several years, I resumed to travel some distant seas, with luggage that puts in serious difficulties at airports, both for my physical and mental health and for my wallet, alternating with diving into the ever wonderful Mediterranean.
I'm not a marine biologist, so my first goal is not to make a catalog of species, but to create beautiful images, images that can thrill and maybe make you want to immerse yourself in this silent world. So my preference is for ambient photos and the use of wide-ranges, even if, of course, I do not disdain, where possible, macro images that often offer shots of incredible beings of the thousand shapes and colors.
This approach to underwater photography has allowed me to get small and big personal satisfactions: from the awards in some competitions, to the exhibition of photographs in extraordinary places such as New York or Milan, to the online publications in prestigious magazines such National Geographic.
