Doing justice to an old friend

Adraga Surf, Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, Portugal

I recently had some nice surprises while looking through my old film archive for photos that I may use for online sales. It seems that, for some strange reason that I cannot comprehend, there were a few images lying around the archive to which I had not payed proper attention in the past.

Here's one of those images.  It was shot on Adraga Beach, a beach near Sintra that is well known to Lisbon-based landscape photographers because of some oddly shaped rocks. Yet there was nothing odd about the rocks in the image, just a soft light hitting them as the waves and the surf rolled in. I liked this image the moment I saw it in the archive. I like the composition, the shadows on the rocks, the light reflected on the waves. It may not be one of my best shots, but for me it just has a nice, balanced feel.

What puzzles me is how this image could have been unnoticed for years on my archive. I don't really understand why I overlooked it for so long. Maybe at the time I was so interested in shooting the odd shaped rocks in the beach with a nice sunset sky, that I didn't pay any attention to the other shots I took during the afternoon. And since that shooting session didn't provide me with the images I wanted in the first place, I overlooked all others... Big mistake.

But hey, we learn from our mistakes, right ? Well some people do anyway, and I sure try to learn from mine. Sometimes I need to look at my images objectively and with no preconceived expectations in order to see them for what they are and not for what I wanted them to be. And sometimes even if I didn't capture what I originally wanted to, what I bring home can actually be very beautiful.

So I guess this image deserved that I did it justice after being forgotten for so long. I humbly apologize to it and hope to learn from my mistakes...

Shutting out the 'busy' world

White Stork leaving nest, Alcacer do Sal, Portugal

During Christmas Holidays I took the time to read the eBook 'Close to Home' by photographer Stuart Sipahigil. It's a nice read, you can finish it in an afternoon, it has great photos, and it talks about something that I sometimes experience: how hard it is to find photographs on your own 'backyard'.

According to the book, this happens because of our difficulty to find something extraordinary out of our daily lives. We are so accustomed to the routine that it's really easy to pass by good photographs without noticing them. I believe this happens because we do not stop and give ourselves time to see what's in front of us. Not to look, but to really see. Absorb it, feel it with all our senses.

I work in an office building. Everyday I see people come and go out of the building, queuing up for the elevators to take them to their workplace, coming down for a ritual smoke or coffee, and talking to their beloved ones or their bosses on the telephone. How often do these people stop to look at what's around them ? Not very often, I imagine... They just don't have the time... Neither do I sometimes, because I'm one of them (apart from the ritualistic smoke... I don't smoke).

Looking back, I feel that most of my best photos were taken either during vacations or on photo tours. But it's not because I get to travel to new and exciting places. It is because those are times when I am able to completely shut out the busy world around me. No, I do not stop talking to my beloved ones when I'm on vacation, but I keep that to a minimum. One phone call every two or three days at specific times just to let them know I'm ok. No family visits, no work, nothing more. It's at those times when I'm able to absorb the world around me and try to make some sense of it, at least photographically.

Normally I keep daydreaming about how great it was if we were less busy and would be able to stop and see what's around us more. My new year's resolution is to stop daydreaming and actually do it. Not to come up with excuses that I don't have enough time to go out and photograph, but to make time for it. Schedule a day every week or so in which I do exactly what I would do if I were on vacations: shut out the 'busy' world and go out and experience the 'real' world no matter what.

I did that last saturday and even though I did not come up with photos that are absolutely astonishing, I managed to shoot some that I believe are nice. I share with you today one of those and hope you like it. And I leave you with a challenge: every now and then, take a day off that 'busy' world you live in, and go and feel like what the 'real' world is all about. You won't regret it...

Farewell to 2010

Twilight Clouds over Kleifarvatn, Iceland

So 2010 has passed... One more year, full with stories, some good, some bad, some interesting, some boring, but that's the way things go. If we didn't have rainy days, we wouldn't give so much importance to the sunny ones. That's a metaphor for life... As far as landscape photography goes, we'd better turn it around because I actually prefer rainy days to those sunny ones with clear blue skies...

Anyway, photographically it has been a great year. The highlight was of course the trip to Iceland in July. I had been wanting to go back ever since I went there for the first time in 2007, and what a trip it was. This time I prepared the trip better than last time and it payed off nicely.

I had talked with some Icelandic photographers trying to know what were the best spots to see the amazing light show that was provided by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and even though I was too late for that, speaking to landscape photographer Orvar Thorgeirsson and visiting him at his gallery in Reykjavik was great. Apart from being able to check out his wonderful work, he gave me some great tips about several places that I wouldn't have been able to discover on my own.

I visited one of these places on my first day in Iceland. Kleifarvatn is a lake near Reykjavik, that provided me with one of the best sunsets I have experienced in my life. I arrived there at about 10:30 pm and there was no one there. There was great light everywhere. I literally did not know where to point my camera. On one side there was a small mound lit up by the reddish light of sunset, on the other there was the lake with beautiful clouds above that were colored pink as the sun went lower on the horizon. And the best thing is that there was no one there, I had the place to myself, so I ended up staying until almost 1 in the morning... The beauty of Icelandic twilight in the summer: great sunset light doesn't happen very often, as there are still lots of clouds and sometimes all you get is grey skies, but when it does it lasts for hours.

I share with you now one of my images from that twilight. The composition is pretty basic, but if there's one travel moment that I will remember from this last year, it's those huge pink clouds over the lake as the sun was setting. It may sound strange, but it almost seemed that Iceland was welcoming me back...

Happy 2011 everyone ! :)