journal
I'm so excited to announce my new book, "Memorias na néboa" (that's galician, it means "Memories in the fog"). A collection of over 100 images made in and around my hometown.
I'm very proud of this volume, the result of years of work and hundreds of walks with my camera in hand.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future” - Steve Jobs
Unlike many other photographers, I don't have a specific mission to accomplish with my work. No bosses, no clients, no guidance of any kind. I have no idea what I will be photographing next week, let alone in 5 years.
With this incredible flexibility comes a huge amount of doubt: where to go, what to photograph, where to share it, which camera I should use. It's all to me, and it can be a heavy burden at times, as I second-guess myself very often. Did I make the right call?
It's hard to see the path when it's being carved right after you. Only when I look back (contact sheets are great for that) I see it clearly. It's not a straight path but a very windy one, with plenty of detours and diversions. But it's a path.
I don't know here it will lead me, if anywhere at all. All I can do is to have some faith, to embrace the unknown of what lies ahead, and keep pushing.
In the end, it will all make sense. Or so we hope.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Photography is not always fun. In fact, it can be really frustrating at times. That's what makes it so challenging but at the same time so rewarding, you have to work hard to get the results you want, and there's guarantee you'll succeed.
Even when we get something, like I did in this video from Pacifica, something else can happen. This day, I lost my only surviving ND filter.
The golf course, my favorite spot to photograph during the winter months here in town. This is round two, the day after I photographed the winter storm that covered the area with snow (watch first part here).
This had been a very mild winter, with almost no snow for more than a month. I had to wait weeks, but it finally happened and I got those snowy Midwest landscapes I love to photograph.
I was very, very close to pulling the trigger on a newer, faster, better, flashier camera. I thought I *needed* it. But then, something happened, something that reminded me of what really matters in photography.
The year could not have started with better conditions: three straight days of dense fog. I'd never seen my town here in Indiana like this before! So of course I spent as much time as possible outside, camera in hand, capturing scenes that don't usually happen around here.
Time flies, and 2022 is already in the rear mirror. What a year this was for my photography! It started relatively slow, with tons of local photography, but it brought a crazy second half with tons and tons of traveling. These were the highlights and best images of the year.
Thank you so much for following along and for all your support. I couldn't do this without you.
I'm back in the US, and I got quite the welcoming! A few hours after arriving, a big blizzard covered Chicago with the magical white powder and brought incredibly cold temperatures. All of that made for some cool photography on the streets.
The only constant is change. That's how my photography (and I) thrives, by moving all the time and being exposed to different places and situations.
I did it! I can't believe it, but I was able to fix my camera's screen myself, saving a lot of time and money in the process. I missed it so much, since the screen plays such a big role in my photography process.
My last stop on this road trip: Pornic, France. A paradise for long exposure photography.
This is it. I'm back home after spending the last 4 months driving across Europe, mostly Norway. An incredible journey I'll never forget.
There will be time for me to reflect on the trip, but as of right now, I'm feeling a bit empty inside. It will take some time adjusting to the new reality, like it did when I first hit the road back in August.
And then, once I get used to being at the same place, once I established a routine, it will be time to leave it all behind again. This is what I do. Where to? When? For how long? I have some ideas, but I will know when the time comes.
This is the end of this (short) period of my life. This is the beginning of a new one.
Iconic locations have been photographed thousands, if not millions of times before. Still, I think there are very good reasons why we should go and try to capture them ourselves, even the cliché photos!
A Q&A from Oslo, on our last day in Norway.
