Struggling to finish

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It took me a long time to write my last post. I started it over several times and couldn't find the right title. It never felt quite finished: I always wanted to change, add, or remove something.

I hadn't posted much on the blog for weeks (even though I have plenty of unfinished drafts) so as soon as I got a draft with an introduction, a few points, and a conclusion, I was ready to publish it.

It wasn't perfect and it didn't need to be. I just wanted to break the bad habit of not finishing things.

I've been struggling with closing projects lately.

I still have many open projects that need my attention, but we need to start somewhere, we need to take that first step, and I feel like publishing my previous post was a small but big victory to me.

A morning in Moab, Utah: photographing Corona Arch

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Utah is one of those places every photographer should visit and photograph at least once in their life.

I'd been to the southern part of this beautiful state before (Zion, Monument Valley...), but I was missing on what are probably the most visited parks: Arches, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef, all very close to each other around this small town, Moab.

This trip wasn't supposed to change that, I want to spend some significant time in the area and this wasn't the best time to do so. I still wanted to get a glimpse of this sacred place for photographers and think about what I could create here in the future.

I only had one morning, and I decided to spend it photographing Corona Arch, just outside of Moab. This is the video of that morning.

Is consistency in our work important?

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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.

 
 

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.

 
 

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.

 
 

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.

Are photo books a good investment?

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In this video, I wonder about the value on buying photo books. Taking into consideration that we can look at images from our favorite photographers online, at any time and from anywhere, are books still a good investment?

I don't mean a financial investment, by the way. I mean an investment on our photography, to improve our vision and to get inspired.

Also in this video, I venture on the streets of Lisbon looking for a photo book. It'd be the first of my new collection. The chosen one: "Genesis", by Sebastião Salgado.