journal
Another video from my trip to the Picos de Europa. After getting a "pressure loss" warning in the car, I decided to play it safe and do a classic hike in this region: Ruta del Cares.
Because of the tire I didn't have time to do the whole hike, but after tasting the beginning of it, I'm definitely going back there sooner than later to finish it.
After spending the night in a shelter at the base of Pico Urriellu, it's finally time to head back to the comfort of the hotel. I made some images on my way down.
It's been a long summer here in NW Spain. It feels like we've had nothing but sunny and clear skies for the last two months. I'm more than ready for some fall weather but hey, if life gives you sun and blue skies, you play with star trails.
This is what I wanted to show you in this video. If you've never shot the night sky, then this can be good to get you started. I talk about the gear you will need, and the software.
Hope you enjoy it!
The Image of the Month for October is now available: Moonrise over Mt Hood.
Watch the video where I made this image: "Moonrise".
What a beautiful evening at the Mt Hood National Forest this was! I had only recently started shooting with my Bronica SQ-Ai when I found out about the full Moon rising behind the always stunning Mt Hood.
I spent almost three hours there, sitting in silence, first enjoying the sunset and then waiting until it was dark and the Moon high in the sky.
This image is the result of those three hours there, trying to capture what I saw. The interaction between the mountain and the Moon, the calmness of the moment, the beauty of it, the fragility of nature and the insignificance of humans.
A new image will be released every month and offered at a reduced price during that time. After 30 days, it will be sold at full price. They will never be on sale at any time in the future, the rate during the first month will be the lowest, ever.
You can find more information about how I create my images and all the details about pricing on The Art and Craft behind my prints.
These past weeks have been pretty exciting. There are plenty of new cameras coming out soon, and even if you have no plans to get any of them (like me), I'm sure we can still agree that new camera gear is always interesting.
Most camera companies are giving their new cameras incremental updates. Yes, Canon, Nikon and Panasonic just announced their first full-frame mirrorless cameras, but they are -at best- just small improvements over what we already have now.
Even Fujifilm and its new medium format cameras are about polishing and making stuff that was already here, a bit better.
I wanted to mention one company who has gone a slightly different way, though: Zeiss and its first full-frame camera, the ZX1.
What's different about this camera has little to do with the hardware and everything to do with the software. The ZX1 looks like someone took an Android phone and attached a full-frame sensor to it. This makes me wonder about the booting up times.
Built-in Lightroom, smartphone-like features like the gallery and sharing capabilities, built-in battery (ouch) and ZERO SD card slots (it comes with a whopping 512GB of internal storage). The experience of using this camera will be very different from using other cameras we are more used to.
Most of the software features in this camera look a little gimmicky: who's going to edit images in the camera? Keep in mind: that will use battery, that you can't change since it's built-in.
This is why the title of this post has a "sort of" at the end.
I look at the ZX1 as a hint of what the future might bring, though. Computational photography is going to play a big role in the near future as modern phones have been showing us for years, but we are yet to see it making its way into "real" cameras.
If the iPhone XS can do what it can do with that tiny sensor and lens, just imagine what a full frame camera could do in the future.
Seeing Lightroom in a camera also reminds me of the attempt made by Sony to bring apps to their cameras. Now abandoned, it was a brilliant idea that got a poor implementation. I'd love to see apps making a come back into cameras - that'd open a whole new world of innovation.
Anyway, just my two cents on the Zeiss ZX1 and the future of photography.
The adventure has begun, and I'm realizing now how hard it is to keep creating daily content while on the road. I'm still here, though!
While I try to find a balance (probably sitting down one or two days a week to create enough content to schedule for several days in advance), let me give you an update from the beautiful mountains of Picos de Europa National Park, in Asturias, Spain.
I am back in my hotel room now, after spending a night in a shelter at the base of Urriellu Peak (also known as Naranjo de Bulnes), one of the most beautiful peaks in Spain. Someone referred to it as the "Spanish Dolomites" yesterday, and I think it's very appropriate.
I'm taking it easy today because I'm afraid one of the tires in the car has a leak. I got the "pressure loss" warning yesterday while driving down on a dirt road, and while the pressure hasn't gone down more than a couple PSI (could even have been me after checking the pressure a few times), it reminds me of a similar situation I experienced with the Jeep in California a couple years ago. That time ended with a flat tire in the middle of a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. Not fun. Hopefully this time is different and I can still get to explore more of this stunning place.
These are some snapshots I took on my way up and down Urriellu, and during my time at 2,000m (6,500 feet).
"Long Exposure Photography: How to make stunning images that defy time" is my upcoming new eBook. It will be released this Sunday, September 30th.
It will be a free eBook but only the current newsletter subscribers will get a copy, at least initially -it will be publicly available a few weeks later.
A good chance to join the newsletter club! Stay up to date with my work and receive free educational material like this one, for free.
And remember, you also get a free copy of "Examples of the PNW" when you sign up.
Join now and get your free copy on Sunday, September 30th!
Last day trip of the American Road Trip Journal! There's just one episode left in this adventure.
This time, I visit the Antelope Canyon, in Page, Arizona (and Horseshoe Bend).
I don't know where I got this quote from. I even had to Google the name to confirm he was The Rock.
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”
I believe in this.
Don't sit and wait.
Study, improve, work, put yourself out there.
Little by little, every day, get closer to where you want to be.
Don't stop.
Nothing is guaranteed in this life, but consistency is our best shot at getting what we want.
Edward Steichen was one of the most regarded photographers of his time. He made some of the first modern fashion photographs.
A lesser-known project of his is a series of images he worked on for a couple nights.
These photographs (Three Views of Balzac) from 1908 were some of the first made with moonlight as the only light source.
More than a hundred years have passed, and they are still powerful, captivating images.
Keep in mind that there was no way to meter a scene like this by then -he had to play with different exposure times. He had an idea in mind, though, and he executed it to create art that hadn't been seen before.
Simply beautiful and inspiring.
Another video from my trip to Portugal, this time of my visit to three historic villages: Sortelha, Idanha-a-Velha and Monsanto.
I've been uploading 2 to 3 videos a week to my YouTube channel for the last couple of months.
It might not sound like much.
A family member was wondering about this recently, and they were surprised when I told them the amount of work involved in creating one of my videos.
Most of them are from the field. Going out already takes anywhere from a couple of hours -minimum- to a full day.
Then I work on the images. This means developing and scanning film -at least one hour per roll- plus post-processing for both analog and digital negatives.
Editing the video can take me several hours as well. More often than not, it's a whole day in front of the computer.
Lastly, I upload the video to YouTube -not an easy task when you are on the road-, create the thumbnails, and promote it everywhere.
It's a long process. One that takes hours and days to complete.
I love every bit of it.
First video from my trip to Portugal, from the beautiful Serra da Estrela. This mountain range is home to the highest peak in mainland Portugal, a place where I headed this clear morning to make some images.
Since I'm in Portugal, I thought I'd talk about the gear that I carry with me on these kind of trips.
I try to bring as little as I can, but enough to still be able to create images, share them, edit videos and upload them, and of course publish stuff on this website.
You can watch this video I uploaded to my YouTube channel if you want a few words about each item.
This is the full list.
Read MoreAin't nobody got time for nothing nowadays.
You can see it on the road or at the grocery store.
Time is the asset of our days. It always has been.
In the past, there was no escape to a "let me show you the photo album from our last vacation". Today, you can simply leave a like on the FB post and swipe away. People aren't paying attention, though.
Curation is more important now than ever.
We need to respect our viewer's time. They will give us a few seconds -minutes if we are lucky- of their days in exchange for good content. We need to use that time wisely.
Give too much, even when it's awesome content, and they'll swipe away. Give too little and they'll forget about you.
Small doses, all the time.
Edit your videos. Keep clips short, between 5 and 10 seconds. Use good music. Show only the parts that contribute to the story.
Edit your images. Don't show 30 pictures of the same thing from different angles. Sit on them for a while before sharing them.
Discarding clips and images will hurt. Like a wound that is healing, this is good.
Knowing what to share and (even more importantly) what NOT to share is a skill in high-demand, a skill that may take time and effort to develop.
I'd say it is THE skill a photographer must have today.
As it usually happens with big corporations, it's taking much longer than anticipated. It's happening nevertheless: there's no room for mirrors in the future of mainstream photography.
They were just a patch to solve a problem that doesn't even exist with today's technology. They are irrelevant and unnecessary.
And that makes them cool.
Just kidding. Kind of.
The reason why I shoot film is because it's the only way I can make images with a tool like the Bronica.
For the same reason, plenty of people will keep using their DSLRs because it will be the only way to get that experience. Mirrorless cameras are lighter and smaller, they bring a lot of advantages but they change the way we take photographs.
And of course, there are people who'll embrace the flaws of DSLRs, especially the early ones that came out years ago.
DSLRs are the new film. They are about to become a niche in photography, used by some only because of the unique experience (and probably look) you can achieve with them.
I'm excited about it.
A few days ago, I went out to shoot my first roll of Rollei Retro 400S. I made long exposure images and tested the dynamic range of the film.
And then, I broke the thermometer while I was developing it. I had to guess all the temperatures and some might have been off.
The images turned out just fine, though. I will have to give it another try, this time using a proper thermometer and not my finger.
They say you don't know how good your backup system is until something bad happens. Well, that something bad happened to me a few days ago, and I regret some of the decisions I made about my backup strategy.
Don't get me wrong: I didn't lose any data. But the process to recover it is taking much more time and effort than I thought.
Read MoreIn this week's chapter about Long Exposure Photography (the last one!), we'll talk about a few things that we have left and were hard to fit in previous posts.
Read MoreIn this video, I try long (really long) exposures with my Sony a6500, my first time doing this with a digital camera.
While film has reciprocity failure, digital has its own set of problems when it comes to long exposure photography.
In the end, though, I was satisfied with the results!
