The One With the Bags

I think that's it - I'm finally going to travel around Europe this Summer. I wish I could convice more people though. I had to say this, I'm freakin' happy!

Meanwhile, I fell in love with this website. It has a wonderful collection of great fine art photography. Check out Nitsa's Street Photography, it's just beautiful.

And... I'm HUGELY addicted to this little game, Dolphin Olympics. I can't believe a tiny game like this could ever be so great... I don't think I can let it go! (my topscore is above 2 million , haha, beat that suckers!)

That's all folks.

Let's dance

What a night. I missed things that rocked my world... after going through all the shit I've lived with for the past three months, I was truly needing some good stuff. But that's not enough, I won't rest until I feel I got what I KNOW I deserve.

I decided to post three (rather old) photos I took this year, just another few backstage shots that don't deserve more than a quick snap.

Starting with my beautiful cat, Luna \m/




And a gorgeous midnight snap of a backyard flower:


And a curious eye shot, with a fisheye vision to the entire street.


And yes, that's me in my winter jammies ;D

Don't let the bed bugs bite

A few more bug shots.
This little fella on the left stayed with me during the Air Race competition, too bad he didn't talk much. But he behaved pretty well and we got along nicely.

But unfortunately I had to let him go. I think he's dead now ;P






As for this ugly one, it was just a regular fly who was bothering me while I was trying to have my coffee, in the backyard. But my cat killed it, and ate it after.

I like my cat.

Drops

The last few days have been hard on me, so I'm taking advantage of the little time I now have for myself trying to do something useful. Well, not quite useful - pleasurable will do just fine! Of course, music and photography still ocuppy the largest part of it, so that's where I'll mostly focus on.

Yesterday I spent about two hours trying to capture a single photo - of something I always loved to see, and an art that truly fascinantes me. Water drops photography. If you google it, you'll find dozens of wonderful macro shots, beautifully captured. But it's quite hard, requires a LOT of patience, and a good equipment is necessary. But I dont have good equipment and I wouldn't settle for a "no".

Oh if only you could see the mess I did... I've created a system out of hanging bottles with strings that continuously keep dripping at a certain ratio - at the same spot. That would leave my hands free to the real capture. Buuuuut unfortunately, it took me almost 200 shots and two battery packs to capture a few good ones. But as it got dark, I ran out of light, and I lost all the contrast in my pictures.

Which means, a LOT of noise. But I'll share my first one! I was really excited when I got it, it was really hard. The general flash speed isn't enough to freeze the action, so it was a pretty good excuse for the fully manual mode.



The depth of field is really really thin with a macro lens, and with drops smaller than 0,5cm, it can take a lot of patience, believe me. But I enjoyed the result, altough amateur, and Im looking forward to more experiencies with this. It was fun to create the colorful background, but next time I'll try to add some ink to the water and use milk drops for extra texture.

I was going to post more of the Air Race photos, but I'll leave that to another day.

Its cause of these things!

Yes, a few backstage photos. Not all the pictures I take are for artistic and commercial purposes of course, sometimes it's just for the fun of it. But I never get to show them to anyone... so why not use this blog to share some of them? I think it's a supercallifragilisticexpialidocious idea!

Starting with something scary. Has anyone actually seen what a worm looks like? Until a few days ago I thought they were just hundreds of rings, I never even thought about their eyes and mouth. Fortunately, I found a baby one in my backyard and had with me my supercallifr... my wonderful macro lens! So here's what I got:















(You can click to make it bigger.) Scary stuff. Looks like it was taken from an "Aliens" movie.

On other news, today was the practice day for the pilots of the Redbull Air Race, which will take place tomorrow and Saturday, in Porto. Thousands of people are expected to show up, and I will certainly be one of them. Despite the fascination of having planes flying at 200kmh just above my head and slaloming by the Douro river, the challenge of photo-shooting such an event is my greatest invitation. And today, the pilots were practising - and so was I.

I have shot and covered a few sport events - but no one was ever this HARD. It's almost impossible for me to shoot (correctly) an event such as this one, at least not with the equipment I have. The planes are too fast, too close, and too unpredictable. I wanted to take close ranged photos of them and I was totally unable too, they were just a motion blur! And I was shooting at speeds as high as 1/1000 of a second. It was incredible.

Even at 4 frames per second at 1/1000s, I didn't manage to get any close shot. It's well beyond my possibilities, so I just put my camera away and enjoyed the rest of the show. Here are two shots, so you'll know what Im talking about:

















The rush is amazing, a bit scary too. So I guess this is it for today.

Shadowplay

A lot of my works are inspired in songs. In fact, most of them are. Almost every conceptual work I did took it's meaning from a certain song, or just part of a lyric. Here's my last work;



I was listening to Joy Division on the way over, and Shadowplay hit me like a rock. I'll give a frisbee to whoever guesses where I took the photo from :D

You may find it in my deviantart gallery, as well as my portfolio.

The Street Lens

There's nothing as good as shooting someone. With a camera.

So you are on the big city. You're alone, it's a beautiful day and you just feel like walking around a bit. You walk carefully, because you're not used to do such thing alone... And then you realize you really don't recognize a single face you see. That... makes you curious.

...And longing for some kind of silent interaction. You want to get involved, get a piece of their minds, which you know nothing about. But fear keeps you from doing any action. You stare, and even the smallest reaction to your momentaneoum voyeurism kicks up your heart rate like a drug.

You start to be afraid; someone, the most insignificant other in the large world that surrounds you, noticed you noticing them. You expect the environment to feel smaller, but instead, you're the one who does. Everything else grows up before your very own eyes, and your only focus concentrates on the fact that you're watching what no significant other cares about.

And now you're really afraid, even to look at it again. You stop. Why did someone stop in the middle of nowhere? Because, it suddenly became the middle of everywhere.

With your heart rate firing up like a bullet from a Magnum, you reach out for your camera. You spend a few seconds preparing the scene, and it takes just about forever. You press the shutter button, its noisy and metallic sound distinguishes it from the ambience very well. And then you quickly take a look around, waiting for someone to yell at you, run after you, or even punch you.

You walk away like you never even cared. A whole new set awaits you by the other corner, and you know that well. Still, you never forget the very still image from the moment you pressed the camera's button. What you felt for yourself, and what you felt for others.

It just never goes away, grows up with you. And that, dear ones, is street photography. Just like a "Speed" pill inside a tea cup, waiting to kill you in order for you to feel alive.

It's just as beautiful as it's scary.