The brand logo of Luca Rajna Progetti Fotografici
The brand logo of Luca Rajna Progetti Fotografici

Lake Como Photographer

The celebrated villas, the villages no guidebook names
— your story among them —
with a local photographer to preserve it

LAKE COMO PROPOSAL | LAKE COMO ENGAGEMENT | LAKE COMO ELOPEMENT | LAKE COMO PHOTOSHOOT | LAKE COMO FAMILY PHOTOSHOOT | LAKE COMO WEDDING | LAKE COMO INTIMATE WEDDING | LAKE COMO LUXURY WEDDING

TE · LARI · MAXIME

‘You above all, Lario’ – Virgil, Georgics, first century BC.

Lake Como – whose true and ancient name, still in use today, is Lario (Larius in Latin) – has been celebrated for its beauty since the days of the ancient Romans, and for two thousand years those who tell stories have chosen it.

Here in Como – which Julius Caesar founded in 59 BC as Novum Comum, bringing the ancient Celtic settlement down from the hills to the lakeside – Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, was born. His statue still keeps watch on the façade of Como Cathedral, beside that of his nephew Pliny the Younger, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus. Pliny the Elder wrote the ‘Naturalis Historia’, the encyclopaedia that became the model for all those of the centuries to come. And it is Pliny himself who hands down a precious fairy tale for anyone who today desires a couple photography session: the origin of the figurative arts. It all began when a woman traced on the wall the profile of the man she loved, following the outline of his shadow, to preserve his presence on the eve of his departure. The portrayal of the human being was born from this act of love. Every portrait, ever since, has drawn upon that gesture – and its founding myth is kept by a son of this lake.

Let us travel through time to the nineteenth century: the greatest love story in Italian literature, Alessandro Manzoni’s ‘The Betrothed’, is set on the shores of the Lario. And there is a marvellous coincidence: the definitive edition of the novel saw the light of day in the very years when photography was being born.

The sketchbook that William Turner, the ‘painter of light’ of British Romanticism, brought home from his Grand Tour bears a title that says it all: ‘Como and Venice’. They were the two greatest enchantments Italy offered him – and they are, not by chance, the two places where I work and live, having married a Venetian.

In more recent times, the lake has become a set the cinema never abandons.
Yesterday: ‘A Month by the Lake’ (1995) by John Irvin, with Vanessa Redgrave, Edward Fox and Uma Thurman; ‘Casino Royale’ (2006), Daniel Craig’s first outing as 007; ‘Star Wars: Episode II’, because around the promontory of Villa del Balbianello, at Lenno, George Lucas found Naboo, the planet of the lakes.
Today: ‘House of Gucci’ (2021) by Ridley Scott, with Lady Gaga and Adam Driver, filmed between Villa Balbiano at Ossuccio and Villa d’Este at Cernobbio; the series ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ (2024), with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, whose scenes on the Lario unfold between Lenno, Ossuccio, Argegno and Faggeto Lario; and ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ (2026), which brought Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt to the lake – arriving by boat at Villa Balbiano itself.

Poets, painters, film directors: the lake has seduced them all. The difference, this time, is that you will be in the frame.

A TALE WITHOUT WORDS

If you have arrived here without passing through the home page, my style can be summed up in one line: a story that remains recognisable even without the use of words. You will not receive stand-alone images: you will receive coordinated sequences, in which every photograph contributes to a wider narrative – frames from the same film, yours. This is what you commission from me: a storytelling project built around your occasion.

The benefit is concrete: you will return home with a story to leaf through, among the finest you own, and thanks to auteur photography Lake Como will still be with you, as beautiful as you lived it. A memory, when it is vivid, can be told and relived – and that is exactly what your project will give you.

In your story, the places will not be ‘a backdrop’, perhaps a blurred one: you will be immersed in them as in a theatrical stage set. Each setting could stand on its own as a landscape photograph – but it acquires its full meaning when it becomes the scene of your story, with you, the human figure, as its protagonist. Wide compositions, with your surroundings at your sides, horizontal like human sight, yet ready to be reframed vertically – because the beauty you have travelled here for deserves due recognition; it deserves to remain, together with those you love.

And this is no manner of speaking: the concept is solid. At the institute of photography I attended instead of university, I studied portraiture with Maurizio Buscarino, the great photographer of the Italian theatre, and the lectures on photographic language were held by Roberta Valtorta, a critic of international standing. This is the school I come from: an expressive way of thinking, shaped with quality and completeness from the very beginning. And this way of building images – the story told in sequences, not the isolated shot – has been with me since my student years, recognised by the San Carlo Borromeo Award for emerging young photographers in my region, which I received immediately after graduating, followed the next year by the gold medal of the FIAP – Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique – and, in recent times, by the gold medal of the International Action Art – UNESCO. For you, this is a guarantee: the photographic style you will receive is recognised and repeatedly awarded.

BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO POSE

Let us settle the objection straight away: you do not need to know how to pose. Putting people at ease is my craft: I have a method of my own, quick and effective. And we will have fun doing it. Within minutes, you will learn how to stand before the lens for the rest of your life – an added benefit. And everyone wants to step onto a stage like Lake Como: in the celebrated places, crowds are the rule. I know the right hour and the right light for each of them: you will have striking compositions without a single stranger in the frame.

I believe in specialisation: I only work where I know every corner – and for you, this means never being the testing ground of a place seen for the first time. I live in a small house on a hill, in a village near the lake; my heart and my work belong to Como and to Venice, like Turner’s sketchbook – and if your journey touches them both, you will have the same local eye on the lake and on the lagoon.

WHAT YOU WILL FIND ON THIS PAGE

The itineraries, for projects dedicated to individuals, couples and families. Planned for a deep exploration of the essence of this territory, free from the Disneyland-style commercial interests of the blogs and travel guides found online, to offer more than what tourists normally discover of our area: not only the celebrated villas, but landscapes and villages that no ‘must-see places’ list has ever named. Living on the lake is what revealed them to me – and as a local I know where to lead you, at which hour, in which light.

Wedding photography topics. Pure reportage when it is documentation, direction when it is needed – we will assess it together. Guidance on a reasoned, informed itinerary is always part of my projects in the case of an elopement wedding. And if you choose a single venue for both ceremony and reception – because a wedding has witnesses and guests – I can still devise the best route, timed just right, for the boat excursion on the wooden taxi boats typical of the lake. Wedding photography is the field in which, in April 2010, I was named Best Italian Wedding Photographer in a top-class competition held by White Sposa Magazine and Tau Visual – the Italian National Association of Professional Photographers. And here I add one further benefit for you, drawn from my professional history: you will be documented by the person who introduced the concept of ‘wedding photojournalism’ to Italy. At the end of the last century, in fact, I was among the first Italian photographers to have a complete website in the modern sense of the term; thanks to this online presence, I discovered the style theorised by colleagues in the United States and Britain, and championed it here through articles and advertising in the trade press. I shall close with a date instead of further words: a local photographer since 1994 – you do the maths.

Your time here will be vivid, and your photographs will remember it.