These are the two videos of my trip to Foz, in northern Galicia. I visited a few beautiful spots, but I had to mention of course the Playa de las Catedrales, one of the most beautiful places in the province of Lugo.
A few days ago, I talked about the importante of shooting a scene over and over. This is really important when the scene is constantly changing.
This was the case when I saw the fog rolling in over the town of Porto do Son, A Coruna. I shot a lot of long exposures and regular shots, because there was no one in the world able to predict what that fog was going to do next.
Indeed, only one of the shots actually turned out as I wanted it to, hiding the town but still showing the building next to the shore. The other shots are either hiding too much or not enough.
I had to stay there for more than half an hour, but I got the image I was after. And I'm very, very happy with it. Probably my favorite image of this month so far.
Have you ever gone out to shoot some photographs just to get home with none? Is it hard to feel inspired? You are not alone, this used to happen to me as well. I think I have a little trick to fix this little problem, if not all the time, most of it.
For the last two weeks, and for the first time in my life, I've been running a few kilometers every other morning. I never liked running, but doing it early and mere minutes after waking up makes it so much worse.
I don't just jump out of bed and start running though: I walk for at least 10-15 minutes before I speed up. It's my way to warm up and get my body (and mind!) ready for what's coming next.
I believe the same principle can help a photographer to get started.
Taking the first photo will get you started and your creativity flowing.
It's all about gaining momentum and put yourself "in the zone". This is true for many aspects of our lives: it's hard to start, but it gets easier over time. Why wouldn't it be the same for photography?
When I go on a photography trip, I usually take snapshots of the place before starting to look for compositions. I do it to document the trip, but also to help me get started and focus on what I'm about to do.
My YouTube videos are another example of something I do (among many other reasons) because it actually helps my creativity. I'm constantly thinking about the place and what's different, or beautiful about it.
Next time you go out to make some images, just take a few random photos. You could even do it at home, before hitting the street. The subject doesn't matter. It could be your keys, your shoes, yourself, on the mirror. The car parked next to your home. The clouds. Or the lack of them. It doesn't really matter.
While this little trick doesn't work all the time (there are days where we are just not in the mood to create, and that's fine), I found it has helped me quite a bit.
Working on the post Shoot the scene, and then shoot it again, and again, I found out how to create contact sheets in Photoshop CC, and I wanted to share this "discovery" with you.
Contact Sheets are a very useful way to look at and share our work. They are the best way to show the thought process behind an image, the steps the photographer took to get to that composition.
To create one, we need to have our images in one folder. Open Photoshop and select File -> Automate -> Contact Sheet II.
This is on a Mac, but it should be pretty similar if not exactly the same on Windows.
The dialog that shows up will offer us quite a few options to customize our contact sheet. Select the folder where your images are, and then play with the number of rows and columns, the spacing between them, and to show or not the name.
It might take a while to process all the photos, but at the end you should have something like this:
To make it look like a traditional contact sheet, you can paint the background black and use a red brush to indicate which photos you selected from the set.
Hope this helped!
I firmly believe that the fewer shots we go back home with, the better. That being said, there are situations where no shots should be spared.
Read MoreOne of the most important things for every photographer should be to back everything up, redundantly and safely.
Read MoreWindmill near San Andres de Teixido.
I loved the way this door "to nowhere" looked in the fog, and I had to make an image of it.
America Untitled (2017-2018) was born from my love for the landscapes of the American West. An admiration that pushed me to the top of volcanos and remote deserts, to hike hundreds of miles, to walk on frozen lakes, and beyond my comfort zone in the middle of snowtorms.
No matter how difficult or challenging a situation was, I always had a camera with me. I took amazing photos and videos; I made countless mistakes and came back with terrible imagery; I ruined cameras due to sand, rain and ice.
All of this was part of a learning process: over time, I developed my own vision, stopped taking photographs and started making images.
It was the beginning of America Untitled. Months of traveling across 25 states and a lot of hard work were necessary to make a collection of 46 images, a strict selection from more than 250 rolls of medium format film.
More dates and locations to come soon.
August 3-17 America Untitled - Casa da Cultura, Quiroga, Spain.
November 15-30 America Untitled - Casa da Cultura, Monforte de Lemos, Spain.
Ilford Photo The American West
Graine de Photographe «America untitled», Une série de paysages en noir et blanc de l’Amérique de l’ouest.
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.
New episode of the American Road Trip Journal.
Still in Sedona, Arizona, Luna and I go on a hike to Baby Bell Rock. It is an easy, short and beautiful hike to great views of the amazing rocks and colors of the area.
I try to shoot some photos with my Bronica SQ-Ai and Ilford HP5+, but once again, I struggle to get good compositions in black and white. Color is just too hard to get out of your mind when shooting here.
I had very different plans for this morning. I was supposed to be photographing the beautiful cliffs of the Costa Ártabra, but ended up shooting rather dramatic, mysterious shots in the thick fog that devoured the whole landscape just after dawn.
You know I love shooting in the fog: you can create beautiful images (like this one, "Light"), that otherwise would be impossible to get.
The key of this image, for me, it's the door and the light that peaks out from it. It's subtle, but it's there. And you can't avoid lookint at it.
See more images of Galicia here.
Watch the video of this morning.
"Crosses", Spain, July 2018. Image created with AOWS B&W Red Filter preset.
This is the preset I usually apply to my snapshots from documenting my life and the places I go to, images that are meant to be for me and don't require much farther editing.
This preset transforms your RAW files into a gritty and contrasty black and white image. It uses the Red Filter profile from Lightroom to further increase that look.
Read MoreToday, and after a long time perfecting the process, I'm proud to announce the result of years of hard work, dedication to photography, and pouring my soul into my passion. A new series of images I'm releasing for sale that I call Image of the Month.
These images are not just ink on paper: I like to think of them as organic images. Made on film, each one tells a story and shows how I see the world: the ethereal, the unseen, the mysterious, the beautiful.
My aim is to share the experience of being there, at that moment, with you. To make you feel what I felt.
The first of these images, "The last of winter", is the perfect example of what moves me and motivates me to create.
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".
What's the meaning of life? Who am I? Could we be living in Matrix? These are really important questions, but they all pale compared to a more important and crucial one. What's better: prime or zoom lenses for landscape photography?
Read MoreI loved photographing the horses on my trip to Cedeira a few weeks ago.
I was looking to shoot the dark ones against the sky, silhouettes on the horizon.
The white ones were more rare, but beautiful creatures. These ones I would try to photograph with a dark background to create contrast.
I got a few exposures, and this one was my favorite.
This image was made on film, actually.
I frigging love grain.
I love it on my film photos: actually, I push them 1 or 2 stops (and even farther) not only to increase the contrast but also to get more grain. Some of my favorite images (like the one above) are full of big, rough grain.
This is why I add it to my digital photos as well.
Read MoreI woke up early that morning, hoping for some fog. There was some indeed, but not enough to make me go out and shoot an hour before dawn.
Then I went to the living room and looked at the castle, on top of the hill. That window is the only one in the house with a clear view of the medieval structure.
I couldn't see it. The fog was, obviously, thicker up there. I put my clothes on and headed outside.
I took a few exposures, this one being my favorite, I believe. It was dark, not was there half an hour left until sunrise, but the fog didn't help the light to get through.
This is why I won't get tired of saying: wake up and get out.
"Gate" is one of my latest images, born just a few days ago.
I want to show you how I made it, from beginning to the end, explaining the whole process.
Read MoreAfter uploading a video about my workflow in the new Lightroom CC, I thought it'd be more useful for many to have those steps written down and well organized.
That's why I wrote a new eBook that I offer for free: "Lightroom CC Workflow".
Lightroom CC Workflow
How to keep your photo library under control and safe
You shoot a lot of pictures every day, you have a few projects going on at any given time, you upload your images to multiple social networks, to your website, you sell stock photos, you print your photos... among many other things.
Making a big photo library efficient for several projects is hard. Keeping it clean, tidy and, most importantly, safe, can be overwhelming. But I believe it doesn’t have to be.
Over the years, I’ve developed and refined a workflow that I use every time I make new images.
The goal of this workflow is to have a small catalog, easy to manage and browse, and unload everything that we don’t use elsewhere (but still accessible).
I sent a copy of the book to the subscribers of my newsletter a few days ago. If you haven't joined us yet, please consider subscribing to stay up to date and get books and other educational material like this one for free.
The book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) license, so feel free to share with everyone you think might find it useful!
