I just sent out issue #49 of the newsletter I host on Substack. I'm trying my best to make it a weekly occurence but don't be surprised if there are some gaps here and there.
In any case, just a friendly reminder of yet another way to stay up to date with my work, and thoughts.
Put the camera away and enjoy the moment. Or so they say.
Certainly, there are moments when we should drop everything and just take it all in, especially when there's interaction with other people.
And there's no better way to worsen the experience than sharing the pictures right away, while you are still in that moment. That's why I don't like phones for photography.
A standalone camera, though, will never take you away from the moment. It will only enrich it.
It makes the experience better because it is through the camera that we try to find what makes a moment especial, a face beautiful, a place memorable. We examine what we have in front of us through the camera, and see things we wouldn't have otherwise. It makes us pay closer attention.
This is the gift photography gives us: a tool to see what we weren't able to see before.
Galicia, January 2022.
Being in good physical shape is a usually overlooked skill in a photographer, especially those who do most of their work outdoors.
The 3-month-long road trip across Norway I embarked on last year definitely took a toll on me, as I went from walking / running more than 10 miles a day to sitting in a car most of the time.
Even though I do a lot of road side photography, being in good shape means more stamina and mental clarity. Something I've clearly been lacking during the last few weeks.
This is hard to measure objectively, but I have noticed that I tend to make better images while on some training program, or immediately after. When I let myself go for a bit, the quality of my work eventually follows by going down.
While this winter hasn't brought as much snow as I was hoping for here in Indiana, I've been working hard on other aspects of my photography (like my contact sheets and my upcoming book "Memorias na néboa"). And that includes getting my body ready.
It's been just a few weeks of training; outside and, when the weather is too nasty, on the treadmill facing an empty wall. As weird as it might sound, I'm convinced those hours spent staring at nothing in the garage will translate into good images in the months to come.
Remember: photography is something you have to do every day, and that doesn't always means taking pictures.
Norway, November 2022.
During 2022, I dedicated some time to create contact sheets of all the photographs I was taken. Including the terrible, bad ones. I wanted to preserve them as a brand new way to look at my work. Focusing less on individual photos and outings, taking a bird's eye view of my work as a whole. And I loved it.
The result is two thick volumes, more than 700 pages and more than 14,000 photographs.
In this video, I'll tell you why I decided to do it, why you might want to do the same, and how to do it.
Indiana, February 2023.
New Mexico Church is an image I took in New Mexico back in 2019. I used my old Sony a6000 with the manual lens Rokinon 12mm f/2 (18mm FF equivalent). I didn't do much to the RAW file, besides adding some contrast.
While the contrast slider can do wonders, sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and go local. In this case, as you can see if you pay close attention to the images above, I added some brushes to make those white parts of the frame stand out even more.
Especially the monk / priest on the bottom right, the second subject in this image after the church.
The effect is very subtle. It's noticeable when presented with the before and the after, but it'd be hard to spot otherwise. It's not obvious.
This is very important when it comes to editing and post-processing our images: to be very subtle. The best editing is the one that does its job without screaming at the viewer.
New Mexico, April 2019.
Indiana, February 2023.
Indiana, February 2023.
California, February 2023.
Castilla La Mancha, December 2021.
From the video Photographing Don Quixote's giants in La Mancha.
California, February 2023.
When life gives you welding glass, you take long exposures! After breaking my last ND filter, I headed to a hardware store to purchase another kind of dark glass, one that I use when I was getting started with long exposure photography years ago. And you know what? It's even better than I remembered. A totally viable option for low budget long exposure photography.
Indiana, February 2023.
Indiana, February 2023.
Montana, June 2021.
From the video Photography in West Glacier National Park.
Indiana, January 2023.
