Work in progress

In this video, I share a couple of projects that are still "work in progress".

Looking up

View fullsize

The sky isn't where I usually look for images. Most of the time, a dark blue sky or a bright cloudy one are just backgrounds for my subjects.

Lately, though, I've been looking up more closely. I made images of the Moon, the stars and the clouds. Even of clear, blue skies.

At a time when we are confined, the sky makes me feel free and connected to a bigger world beyond the walls of this house.

I'll keep looking up.

Here for the long term

I’ve been making images for a few years now. Back when I got started, I had no idea where this passion of mine would lead me. Today, I spend most of my days taking photographs, editing photographs, writing about photography, thinking about photography, talking about photography, studying photography.

While I don't know how long I'll be able to do this full time, I do know that even if I had to get another job to pay the bills, I'd still be doing photography.

This project of mine has grown to the point of being the purpose of my existence: to record what I see in a visual form, and to inspire others to do the same.

As I admitted recently, there's something missing in my work, and there always will. The same way a diary is never finished, I will never be "done" with my images which I consider to be my reflection, a part of me.

This is a life-long project. One I'm extremely excited about.

Creating space and time for bigger projects

I've been working on a couple of books that I hope to release very soon. I started working on one of them years ago, but never found the time required to finish it and it's been a side project since then.

I realized I wasn't going to finish it ever unless I created some space and time for it. This means I had to cut down on other parts of my work, my YouTube channel to be specific. I haven't uploaded any videos for over a week now, but don't worry, there will more as soon as I'm done with these two bigger projects.

View fullsize

Boring days are the most important days

Making an image on days when everything falls into place -the right conditions, the right place, the right time, the right mood- is easy. Those days hide a big danger, though: when one of those elements is missing, we might think it's not even worth trying to make images.

I love to make images in the fog or even in severe weather conditions, but most days are just sunny, clear, boring. I have a hard time finding the motivation to get out on those days because I know the chances to make a "good image" (an image that fits my style) are very slim.

Those are the most important days, though, because they are the ones that make you a photographer.

First, they show the world as it usually is - in order for us to see the extraordinary we need to sense the ordinary first.

Second, they force you to think out of the box. In a sense, a foggy day is bad news to me because I usually end up creating something similar to what's worked before. A sunny day, though, is unpredictable: unlikely to generate great images, but potentially the spark for new ideas and projects. It was on some of those boring and flat days when most of my ongoing projects were born.

We are impossible

Space

During these past few weeks, I spent quite some time staring at the mountains in the distance. They fascinate me. At night, I'd look up and see the shadows of those giants, just a few miles away. I'd imagine how cold it was up there, how windy, how deathly.

Not only we live in the only planet capable of hosting us, but it is within a very thin section of Earth that we live in: barely 3 miles from sea level to the highest settlement.

Time

If you were to spin a roulette of time, with numbers from the beginning of the Universe until its end, what are the chances that the ball would fall on your lifetime? Beyond impossible.

Existence

What about our own existence? If our parents had sex a mere seconds earlier or later, we wouldn't be here. The odds of our parents to exist and meet were even lower. It keeps getting less and less likely the higher you go.

Today is impossible

We live in an impossible part of the Universe, at an impossible time, and we are the product of an impossible chain of events.

Today is impossible and yet, it's happening.

PS: I'm working on a project about these issues and I think a lot about it.

Is consistency in our work important?

View fullsize

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.

View fullsize

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.

View fullsize

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.

View fullsize

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.

Fun photography ideas for the summer

I'm a winter person, I don't like much about the summer. The heat, the crowds, the hars light... none of them.

It's usually a bad time for me to go out and make images, so I spend most of the summer inside writing, editing and reading.

This year, I came up with 6 different photography ideas to try. From a homemade pinhole lens to use oil from a can of tuna to emulate the Holga look:

#1 Photographing the clouds
#2 Homemade pinhole lens
#3 Fireworks
#4 Night photography in a forest
#5 The Holga Look
#6 Infrared

It was fun and I learned a lot from every one of these projects. I hope at least one of them inspires you to try something different!

New projects

These last few days, and besides launching Image of the Month, I've been busy working on a couple of new projects.

I'm trying different techniques, and even though I don't know if these projects will materialize in new work, I've been having a lot of fun.

I'll be posting some images as a preview of what's to come. The one above is the first one and belongs to Project 1, still with no name.