New Year's resolution

For me photography is  the art of framing reality and freezing that special moment in time forever.
At the same time you are stooping the universe in that split second you are also trying to preserve it for eternity in some kind of medium. It's a way of never forgetting an idea, a concept or a person; of sharing that special image with the world or with your loved ones.

I believe a lot of memories that people have are still images in their minds, like pictures. And once you see that old picture you took years ago, it all comes back to you...that special moment...that smell..that talk...that crazy day in your life...
It's like you never forget anything...your brain just needs a little help.

I've been practicing photography for a while and when I started a friend told me "So you want to start taking pictures and learn about photography (ironic smile) well  I'll show you the photographer graph"

I answered "I just want to take pretty pictures of my vacations, I'll never be like that"
Well I guess I'm on the "Found an old film camera" phase :) to be accurate, it was more like "I fixed an old camera and stated taking pictures with it" but that's a different story, a different post.
Still have to master composition now and practice till I die :D a long way ahead of learning and disappointment , joy  and wonder...at least I hope so.

So to get to the point, my new year's resolution for photography is to do more photography on people.
I've had a hard time capturing that photographic essence in humanity itself. I have some wonderful portraits of friends and family but it's easy because I know these people so well it's easy for me to capture their essence in a single frame. For me it's hard to do it for those I do not know, either because I'm afraid people will react in a bad way when I take their picture or because I feel that they wouldn't like to be portrayed in that specific way I'm envisioning.

When I started to think about this I though to myself "I'll start with portraits...that's it...a self portrait" so I wondered how I would portrait myself and how people would see me and if I would like to see my own picture made public and started having second thoughts and doubts. That's when I realized I was stuck on a loop...my fears and doubts about taking pictures of strangers where the same for my own picture.

That's humanity...your fears, your thoughts  you doubts and your beliefs, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad, you perfections and imperfections.
When you're looking at humanity you are looking back at yourself, like in a mirror...or a picture!

Stars

Although nowadays I live in an urban area of my country, I grew up right between suburbia and the mountains, in an almost rural scenario.

One of the thing I miss most from my childhood is looking up and gazing the millions of light dots above me twinkling.

Light pollution is so strong that it can easily change the scenario of your picture even if the light comes from small cities or villages far away. The difference between the picture above and bellow was merely pointing the camera down.

If you look at the starts for a while you might even be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a falling star.

But in the picture above that is not the case, after I took the picture and looked at the LCD on the back of the camera I noticed the light trace. When I looked up to check the sky I saw it in the midst of a million other, moving across the night sky slowly. It was probably a satellite or the international space station.

I would have never noticed the "moving star" if not for the picture...of course it's all luck :)

Lisboa Region

Lately I haven't been having that much time to write on this blog, this is mainly because I've changed my Job and accepted a new challenge. It was hard to leave the job I had for 6 years and start again somewhere else and it's also very time consuming. But even though the lack of time I still take some time off to take pictures and most of all to post process them.

My latest finished sets are about the Lisbon area, I've been there, in vacation, last summer visiting some friends.

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal. It's a densely populated and urban region, I like visiting other cities and tend to like street photography, but if you don't like cities it also has beautiful surrounding places like:

Sintra

Mafra

Cabo da Roca

Portinho da Arrábida

Tróia Peninsula

You can check the rest of the pictures in the following sets:

• Lisboa
• Sintra
• Mafra
• Cabo da Roca
• Portinho da Arrábida
• Tróia

Bugs

Bug - "(loosely) any insect or insect like invertebrate."

As a software engineer,  I'm used to hear the word Bug all the time, only in a different context "Informal. A defect or imperfection, as in a mechanical device, computer program, or plan; glitch"

Although they are from very different realities, computers and Arthropod are so similar in many ways...

...and modern mechanics and robotics seam to mimic this animal phylum.

All my life I've been fascinated by science fiction, especially the Cyberpunk scene, the picture above is Tachikoma, an A.I. spider like multi-legged combat vehicles from one of my favorite fictional universe Ghost in the Shell.

It's so weird when reality start catching up with fiction.

But getting back to taking pictures, bugs are one of my favorite subjects, although it's not an easy task and requires special macro techniques and equipment, I quite enjoy it.

Unfortunately most people don't seam to enjoy it that much and some are even repulsed by the sight of spider pictures.

I can't understand why, they are such wonderful creatures.

I'll keep taking pictures of them and tagging then just in case there are some bug fans out there!

Cats

Cats are one the most popular things on the internet

I have always felt hypnotized by a cats' stare and ever since I was a little kid I always wondered what was behind those beautiful eyes...what are they thinking about when they stare at you like that...

Cats make great photographic models, unlike dogs that either get excited and move frenetically around when they see a camera or run away scared of the strange dark, rock like, thing you're holding in your hands, cats seam to enjoy the camera!

Even when you are playing around with them, they always seam to stop and stare at the camera...it's almost as if they understood what you are doing and wanted you to take their picture...maybe they're just plain dumb...

Or maybe they're just checking you out and planning how to kill you and steal all your territory and food. After all, beneath that shallow domestic look, they are wild animals!

I'll keep tagging some cats in my flickr account for all you cat lovers out there XD

Sunny 16 rule

I started taking pictures in the digital era so I never heard of the Sunny 16 rule. I probably never heard of it because I never took any type of class or workshop in photography.
It's the big advantage and the disadvantage of learning by yourself, you always skip to the part you really want to learn about!

I finally got the courage to go out and shoot 35mm but unfortunately I must have forgotten the light meter switch on and killed the battery I purchased for the Spotmatic.
So I said to myself "use your gut feeling, that should be enough" the result was 36 pictures with overexposure.
If I had known about the Sunny 16 rule this never would have happened...stay in school kids :)

It was a bit cloudy and I tend to underexpose all my pictures, not only when I use manual lenses but even with the modern electronic gear I've got, so my gut feeling was to let more light in than usual. 

They were not that bad and it even added an extra vintage look to them but it was not deliberate so it feels kind of cheating XD

I'll try to keep uploading photos on my 35mm set when I have some spare time for it and I bought a new battery and film, so I hope I'll get it right next time.

And, for all you purist out there, I edited them so they didn't look so bad...haters gonna hate...

Boats

I love taking pictures of boats and living near the shore made me appreciate them. Nonetheless, I know almost nothing about them!

So, for all you boat lovers XD her's a tip for you: http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

It's a great site, it has an amazing live tracking feature of almost all marine traffic.
You can click on the boats to see what's their route, type, nationality and all kinds of specs, you can even upload pictures of that specific boat you clicked on.
You should also check out the gallery, since it has some awesome pictures!

There's also a site for plains: http://www.flightradar24.com/

But I don't like taking pictures of commercial jet planes, they all look alike... commercial boats look more custom made, they have a certain rusty vintage look from another century that I like. And passenger boats are just fantastic looking floating hotels, but most of the time it's commercial traffic  over here...

Unfortunately it does not have the cute small sailing boats :(
But to catch them it's easy, every weekend if it isn't a stormy day, just check if there's some wind: http://www.windguru.cz/

You can check out more in my Boats set. I'll keep updating it from time to time...