Finally got to shoot in the snow this winter! I take you with me on a short trip to the mountains, and then we take one of the images I made there, we edit it and we talk about what we can and can't do with our photos in post.
I made this image with my Bronica SQ-Ai. It was one of those special moments when you can't believe what you are seeing through the viewfinder. Something so beautiful that you fear your image won't do it justice.
After this shot, I took a bunch with my digital camera (the fog was moving really quick and presented a lot of different compositions), but this is still my favorite.
What a beautiful morning.
One of the most beautiful drives I’ve done.
Winter is my favorite season for photography. There's just one problem, though: the weather.
Over the years, I've gotten caught in several snowstorms (and even worse, ice storms) all over British Columbia, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, California, South Dakota and of course, in the Midwest.
The trip through Northern California was the scariest one, I lost control of the car twice due to ice. That was the last time I drove through a snowstorm, putting yourself in danger for an image is not worth it. How do we do it, then?
This day, I had to drive 40 miles on frozen dirt roads to get to the closest town.
Travel before the storm.
That's what I did in South Dakota: I drove more than 1,000 miles in between two big storms and once the second one hit, I was ready and on location.
Photograph the storm.
It was mid-April when the blizzard came. Temperatures dropped to single digits (F) and the storm dumped almost a foot of snow. There was no one else around and no way to get to the Badlands after they closed the highway.
Winter wonderland.
I got one of my favorite images ever that day, and I had a winter wonderland waiting for me the next morning. Best of all, I was able to drive in and out of the park safely.
That's my advice for winter photography: avoid the road on severe weather conditions, be on location beforehand. If that's not possible and you still insist on making the drive, please make sure that you and your car are ready for the worst conditions.
While it's totally possible to get a camera and then find a subject to photograph, it's definitely much easier to find something you are passionate about and then start capturing it.
If you gave me a camera 10 years ago, I wouldn't have known what to do with it.
Instead, photography came naturally to me when I discovered my passion for the outdoors after moving to the Pacific Northwest.
A camera is a tool to capture what we see. I didn't see anything 10 years ago. I do now.
I stumbled upon this wall during a walk in Estói, Portugal, a few weeks ago. It was around noon on a bright day.
The hursh light was creating all sorts of shadows, and this street light and wall caught my eye. I'm not sure what those little windows were for, but they were the perfect match for the shadow and the paving stone.
A movie about the rain and the beauty it brings.
This is the first image made in 2019 I feature on this blog. I took a shot of this old train station on a very foggy and cold day.
Josef Koudelka doesn't spend more than a few months at the same place. For him, being constantly on the move is a requirement "to see, and if I stay longer I become blind".
Other photographers seem to thrive in relatively confined spaces, like Bill Brandt.
Similarly, some photographers need to be shooting all the time and feel depressed when they don't have a camera on their hands. Others are fine with taking photography trips twice or three times a year.
In the end, I think there's no right or wrong way to do it, your photography is just a reflection of who you are.
In this video, I go back to the beautiful Sil River Canyon. I was supposed to shoot film but my Bronica ran out of batteries. In the end and having to shoot digital, I felt like the video wasn't as compelling as it could've been if I shot the Bronica.
I believe that sometimes the story behind an image can be very important, even more than the image itself. Film can provide you such story.
I've talked about documenting our work before on this blog, and I wanted to share those and new thoughts on a video.
Next week, I'll share some tips I've learned over the years, and I'll talk about the camera gear I use.
Related:
While exploring the beautiful Alentejo, I stumbled upon this dead sheep. Alone in the middle of a field, I spent some time looking at it before deciding to take a few exposures.
It was an unexpected and powerful scene and I wanted to take a few minutes before moving on.
I was sick for all of last week. This gave me a lot of time to think, and I came up with a little project: building a darkroom as basic as possible so I could bring it with me everywhere.
This is still an on-going project, and in this video I share my thought process and the first results. I expect to have a much more refined and polished process by next week, along with the first final, serious prints.
In my opinion, winter is the best time of the year to make images. It comes with some risks, though.
While I do go on some hikes, most of the shooting during the cold months is done not too far from the car. I drive to a location and make a few exposures. Then I drive to the next spot. This is what I did last week during some intense cold and foggy weather.
I wasn't careful enough and several days of moving between a warm car and the freezing outdoors have taken their toll on me.
It's just a cold and I'll be out making new images soon. It just kills me to see that the fog is still with us and I can't stop thinking about the images I'm not making. All because I was careless.
New video where I shoot some film in some of the best conditions I've had in a while.
One of the many beautiful tress you can find in this region of Portugal.
Foggy day on one of the many roads of the beautiful Alentejo.
"Photography is not a sport, there are no rules, everything must be tried and tested" - Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt is one my greatest inspirations. I love his landscapes, portraits and even the nudes (not a big fan of the genre, but the way he did it was just genius).
I think what I like the most about him is his approach to photography. For him, it was all about creating something with the medium, avoiding silly self-imposed rules.
He died in 1983, 5 years before Photoshop was created. That didn't stop him from completely changing his images in the darkroom. Actually, he admittedly did most of his work in the darkroom.
The image of the seagull is a good example. He added the bird afterwards, and the morning Sun years later.
He was brilliant, and we'd be wise to follow his advice to experiment and try everything.
PS: If you want to know more about Bill Brandt, I strongly recommend watching this interview from 1983 for BBC's Master Photographers.
I had Mértola on my list of places to visit for a while. On my way there, I drove through the Guadiana Valley Natural Park, where I saw signs on the road warning about lynx. Now, that was something new to me!
This is an image of a little chapel on top of a hill, just out of town. The light was harsh allowing only for very high contrast shots. This was what I came up with.
