It was great to be back in beautiful Portland, Oregon. We met with old friends, we ate some of our favorite foods in town, and visited some places we love. It was a wonderful time.
Everything comes to an end, though. We've left the city behind and we are getting ready to spend a couple weeks in California.
I wanted to share some of the moments from these last few days in Portland.
The chances of finding a fast and reliable connection to back all your photos and videos up on the road are slim at best.
AirBnBs and hotels usually offer a very slow WiFi, enough to send a few messages and images to family and friends, but not good enough for almost anything else.
Coffee shops are a better bet, but they can get really expensive and good WiFis aren't as common as one might think.
I've found that public libraries are the best option by far. They are quiet, free, and offer good speeds (at least in big cities): 100mbps download and 50mbps upload as I write this from the one I'm at. A great place to work and upload all those photos and videos.
They are also full of, you know, books. So if you are taking a break, consider putting your phone away and grab a book instead.
Since I got my Bronica back in 2017, I’ve produced so much content with it (and about it) that some people started to identify me as the Bronica guy.
Many stumbled upon my work while looking for information about these cameras (and film in general). Over time, a large part of my audience was built around the Bronica.
My camera was becoming more important than what I was creating with it.
As I realized about this, I started to wonder if those new eyeballs were looking at my images or at my camera. Would they stop being interested in my photography if I didn't shoot the Bronica? Would they look away if I shot digital?
I doubted myself and my work.
The Bronica had taught me so much about photography. And yet, it was making me feel trapped, even if this was a mostly self-imposed sentiment.
I knew what I had to do: to the disappointment of many, I decided to leave the Bronica behind on this trip. Not only because it'd be a pain to carry, but also because I could break that Bronica guy label once and for all.
This was one of my most productive trips and I'm very proud of the work I did on the road. It's all digital, it feels liberating, and I can't wait to use my Bronica again.
It took me a long time to write my last post. I started it over several times and couldn't find the right title. It never felt quite finished: I always wanted to change, add, or remove something.
I hadn't posted much on the blog for weeks (even though I have plenty of unfinished drafts) so as soon as I got a draft with an introduction, a few points, and a conclusion, I was ready to publish it.
It wasn't perfect and it didn't need to be. I just wanted to break the bad habit of not finishing things.
I've been struggling with closing projects lately.
I still have many open projects that need my attention, but we need to start somewhere, we need to take that first step, and I feel like publishing my previous post was a small but big victory to me.
It's been 558 days since we left our tiny studio apartment in Portland, the last time I had a permanent home.
Being constantly on the move has made me very aware of all my possessions. I always thought I had few things, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
After getting rid of what felt like most of my stuff, I still had enough to fill two big suitcases, a few backpacks and two camera bags (see picture above).
I've been trying to reduce my possessions ever since, one thing at a time. Not because I wanted to become a minimalist but because I had to: for most of the year, I move to a new place every week, and having to carry your things from place to place makes you instantly regret all of those you don't really need.
It's been a lot of trial and error, but during my most recent road trip I was finally able to fit all I need in one carry-on size bag and one small camera bag:
some clothes (not a lot of them!), shoes and very basic toiletries to stay clean and look decent,
a phone and a computer to work from anywhere and communicate with anyone, and
a camera to capture all of this
This new approach has changed the way I think in many ways.
Read MoreI didn't have the chance to photograph New Mexico during my last road trip across the US, and that was something I wanted and needed to fix. I spent 10 days there and photographed some of the places I had seen through the eyes and work for great artists and photographers, like Ansel Adams.
This is going to be my couch for the next few weeks, here in Portland, Oregon.
I've lost count of how many different couches I've had during the last year and a half. How many places where I've had my morning coffee. How many homes.
Tomorrow, I might not be here. Today, this is home.
A short video showcasing the editing of my image "Moonrise, White Sands" made in New Mexico a few weeks ago, using Adobe Lightroom CC.
I take a lot of pictures. A lot. That means I'll have to go through hundreds if not thousands of photographs after a trip, which can be overwhelming and take a lot of time.
I've developed a process over the years that is relatively fast and painless. This is how I select my best images.
I had to wake very early and drive for almost 2 hours to get there, but it was totally worth it. What a morning at the Salt Flats.
I had found this pyramid (governor Hunt's tomb) on Google Maps. Placed on a hill within Papago park in Phoenix, seemed like something worth photographing.
This place is very close to the airport and you can see planes taking off and landing all the time. I wasn't expected to get photobombed by one, though.
I then tried to include them in the frame. I still have to go through these to see if any may work. Having quite a few shots of this scene, it might not be an easy task.
A month ago, I saw a shadow on top of a wall. The sun was setting and all I could see was the silhouette of the little cat. I knew I had to capture this scene but I didn't have any camera on me at the moment, luckily I was able to take a few snapshots with my phone.
I only visualized the cat and the building on the right when composing this image, it wasn't until I copied the files to my computer that I saw the second cat resting in the background.
Hello from Vancouver, Washington.
I'm back in the PNW and it feels amazing. This place was home for more than 5 years, it was here where I fell in love with nature and photography, and I couldn't be more excited about getting to spend the next few weeks in this very special place.
This means that the road trip across the Southwest is over, though. These are some of the numbers:
You never know how things will turn out when you are on the road for so long. We had everything booked ahead of time which could mean that a problem with one of the hotels or AirBnBs, or even worse, a mechanical issue with the car, could ruin the whole trip. A chain reaction of sorts.
Luckily, everything was near perfect and I couldn't ask for more. I had an amazing time and I believe I made some of my best images on this trip.
Now it's time to rest for a few days before starting to photograph the amazing places of the PNW. I will be using this time to reflect on the work produced in the last few weeks, and of course to share it. Not only images and videos but also some thoughts I've had and lessons learned in the field.
Utah is one of those places every photographer should visit and photograph at least once in their life.
I'd been to the southern part of this beautiful state before (Zion, Monument Valley...), but I was missing on what are probably the most visited parks: Arches, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef, all very close to each other around this small town, Moab.
This trip wasn't supposed to change that, I want to spend some significant time in the area and this wasn't the best time to do so. I still wanted to get a glimpse of this sacred place for photographers and think about what I could create here in the future.
I only had one morning, and I decided to spend it photographing Corona Arch, just outside of Moab. This is the video of that morning.
I had an amazing time at Great Sand Dunes National Park. I had to drive quite a lot to get here, but it's one of those few locations on my list of "places I must go back". A breathtaking landscape.
I almost didn't make it to this location. I'm very glad I did, because I made some of my favorite images ever that morning in White Sands National Monument, New Mexico.
It was a cloudy and windy day out in the Arizona desert wilderness.
I love making these silent videos. Sometimes, there's nothing to say.
Hello from sunny and very hot Phoenix, Arizona!
I've been in the US for more than a week now and it feels good to be back. Especially in the Southwest where the landscapes take your breath away every single time.
Before getting here I got the chance to spend a few days in Madrid, Spain and Los Angeles, California. I didn't do much photography in those cities as we tried to do more "touristic activities" for once.
I did make some images here in Arizona. I visited Saguaro National Park, near Tucson, as well as the Superstition Wilderness, east of Scottsdale. I hiked to the top of Camelback Mountain and spent an evening in the desert photographing the moonrise.
Time flies, though, and we are getting ready to leave tomorrow as we move into New Mexico. NM is a state I didn't get to photograph during my last road trip in the Southwest, and I really look forward to it.
I'll keep you updated on our travels. I also post photos on my Twitter, I upload stories daily to my Instagram account, and of course I will be publishing videos about this trip on YouTube.
Plane landing near LAX
Santa Monica
Downtown Los Angeles
Plane landing in LAX
Moonset in Phoenix
Madrid
Flying above the Southwest
Saguaro National Park, Arizona
Saguaro in the Superstition Mountains Wilderness
Superstition Mountains Wilderness
Saguaro cactus at sunset
Can you tell I like Saguaros? Me photographing one in Saguaro National Park
Yet another one in Saguaro National Park
Heard Museum, Phoenix
Timelapse from last night. pic.twitter.com/aqpi8l5NeZ
— adrian (@aows) April 19, 2019
Consistency:
consistent behavior or treatment
In photography, being consistent means creating images that look similar. Maybe we shot them with the same camera and lens, maybe we made them look that way in post-processing.
Let's talk about consistency, when we should be consistent and when it's ok to switch things.
I am a big believer in telling stories through a collection of images, be it in a zine, book or exhibition. Let's call it a project: a vision we have, a message we want to deliver, something we want to tell.
Generally speaking, I want to make all the images in a project look very similar, to have the same aesthetic. Otherwise, it might confuse the viewers.
Think of a book: all the words, letters and sentences are the same color and size. Only titles are different to make them stand out, to mark an end and a beginning. All the pages follow the same layout as well. It'd be too distracting otherwise.
There are a few things we want to keep constant or very similar: if an image is monochrome or color, the amount of grain, the contrast, the aspect ratio.
We can emphasize the importance of an image making it bigger, spanning through two pages, for example, or even changing the aspect ratio just for that one.
Different projects might require completely different approaches, though. I believe it is ok to not be consistent between projects: one could be in color, shot with a phone; the next one could be in monochrome using a medium format camera.
If we pick up a different book, we don't mind to see another font being used, more or less margins, a different size altogether. As long as it's kept consistent through the whole book.
I try to apply the same principle to my photography: to be consistent in a project, treating all the images the same way, so they form that body of work where none of its components is more or less important but just another piece of the puzzle.
That's what consistency offers: being able to create a cohesive collection of images that tell a story.
