Photography doesn't take you away from the moment, it creates it

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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.

Getting ready for the photography to come

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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.

I made two books with the contact sheets of a whole year of photography

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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.