Light is everything

The most important thing in a photo is the light. Light has the ability to make or brake any shot. You might have a great camera, a great model, a great set, BUT if you don’t have great light, you have nothing. It works the other way around too.

Every time I’m about to take a photo, the thing that inspires me the most is a beautiful lightning. Is the one thing I’m constantly fixated with. And natural light is my personal favourite. When I first started with photography I was dying for the opportunity to be in a full equipped set and try out all the lights, flashed and any lighting device I could put my hands on. But once I did, I was kind of disappointed.

Even though the possibilities are great because everything is under your control, It wasn’t as fascinating as I thought. Natural light has this quality that makes it perfect and amazing for pretty much any kind of photo. Well, at least from my point of view.

Of course there are many things that contribute and affect a photo besides the light (I will talk about that in another post). But light provides the mood, the ambiance of an image. And natural light is as versatile as it comes.

I particularly like the afternoon light the best. Back in Venezuela the perfect time was around 16.00h. Here in Spain it varies a lot depending on the season and time of the year. Right now, days are very short and the light is very soft almost during the entire day and that’s great!

When taking photos I really like to have a focal light point. It’s not so easy to catch it because those points appear in very specific hours of the day when the sun is lower but hasn’t started to set yet. Here are a couple of examples!

I really like how those glares look like. I feel they give the photos a little extra something! This is one of the reasons I enjoy natural light so much. You can play with it so much during a single day and season, the possibilities are endless.

Whether you prefer natural light like me, or artificial lightning, always pay close attention to it. On how you are going to use and what mood you have in mind for your photo.

Happy shooting!

Eye for photography

Recenlty, reorganizing my photos, sorting from one disk to another, I found a folder of an unexpected small photoshoot I did last year. When I was studying photography in Bogotá, at Labloom Academy, some girls from the fashion production course were in trouble due to technical problems with their camera and went looking for a photography student that could help them. And, gladly, there I was.

They were doing the final exam where they nedeed to portray a fashion style, and when asked them what look they were looking for with the photos, they said they wanted to represent a fusion of styles between Madonna and Cindy Lauper and wanted a very natural session.

I loved doing these pictures. Back then I had done many portraits but never a session that  approached so much to a fashion photo shoot. Since I did it, I discovered that this is the type of photography I enjoy the most and the one I would like to work in as a professional.

One of the things I liked so much about doing these photos was the lighting. The place we where had two large windows and white walls, and as the day was quite cloudy, the light was very bright and soft at a the same time.

I remember that day my teacher asked to see some of the pictures I had done and he told me I had an eye for photography. That was a great incentive to motivate me to continue learning and practicing to achieve my dream of one day working as a professional photographer .

Unfortunately, since then, I haven’t had the opportunity to participate in a session like this and I all i think about is when will the opportunity raise again.

Finally, portraits again

Lately I have been taking to many pictures of nature and landscapes. And, although I’ve found that I like it more than what I thought, I must admit i’m a fan of portrait photography .

Recently I started looking for models to do a photo shoot. It’s been too long, too much for my taste, since I last did portraits,  and I was desperate. However, after several proposals and a request via my Facebook page, someone answered my plea.

My cousin, Anna, volunteered as a model. We decided to use the beach as our stage and do a very natural session. We started about five o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun was beginning to set and that allowed us to take pictures with quite a variety of light effects.

For the wardrobe we went for full white clothing, contrasting with well defined red lips and the many colors of her eyes. Always having in mind the feeling we wanted to achieve with these photos, the light, the color of the sky and the breeze came together in perfect harmony creating the mood we needed.

It had been some time since I last did portraits so it took me a few clicks to get warm. But after a while everything started to flow, and without realizing it, I spent two hours photographing Ana. Here is a small gallery of my favorites.

Portraits is a style that I definitely want to perfect. There is still much to learn and I will continue practicing.

The beauty of a rainy day

Nothing like lighting a couple of candles, listen to some mellow jazz and sit down to write on a gray and rainy day in September. And, even if the flu attacks, for me, there ir nothing as relaxing as this.

And lately cloudy and rainy days have become a common landscape. Personally, this used to be a problem because I never felt in the mood to take pictures in wheather like this.

When I do a mental recap of my photos I realize there is a pattern. I always tend to take pictures of bright days, with intnse or soft light, but always cheerful and sunny. I realized that I have always felt unmotivated to photograph in cloud , rainy and gray enviroments.

This got to a level that, if it was necessary to go on out in this weather, I didn’t even take my camera with me, thinking I would have nothing to capture and,  that even if I did, I would be disappointed with the results. What a mistake I was making. Recently, I went out of my comfort zone and I’m so glad I did it.

I decided to take my camera for a walk with me to the park on a gray afternoon, when the clouds had kidnapped the sun and cool breeze presaged the coming of the rain. These are some of the pictures I took .

I like how these photos turned out, contrary to what I expected. They are far away from the regular kind of calm and sunny days pictures I take, and I love them. I feel there is something special in them. Soft colors, pale light, the deserted park; put together, it has a unique charm.

I liked to try a different style of photography. I got out of my commonplace and dared to do something I had never tried before  with my pictures, maybe just for fear that it wouldn’t turn out well. I’m definitely going to begin to practice more photography with this style.

Now I feel and see the beauty of a rainy day. And this is something else I’ve learned through photography, there is beauty in everything around us, maybe it will take us some time and effort to realize, but there is.

A day at the beach

For me I think there’s nothing like a beach day . And last weekend I had a great one. I went, with the best company to Villasar de Mar, a town north of Barcelona.

I also had the opportunity to take a lot of pictures and I loved the results . At first it was a little afraid to face my camera to the breeze, water and sand but then, as the sunset approached the light became so spectacular that I could not resist . Of course I must add here that  I have a huge preference to photographing with this light. There’s something about that time of the day that is find very special.

I spent some time photographing the waves. I loved how they lit up and I wanted to freeze the motion and light to remember, and share the feeling of peace they gave me. The sound of the waves crashing on the shore, the soft sunlight at its perfect temperature and the feeling of soaked sand under my feet.

Everytime I see pictures of waves, my attention is caught by the forms they make. Sometimes they seem more like if they were solid sculptures than water. So, I tried to capture some of that in my photos and I must addmit i’m pretty happy with the results.

With such good lighting and this type of sand, I could not resist to take some macros. The beach is a beautifull picture when we put it together, but it’s always good to look at things a little more closely and appreciate all the details.

Here is a small gallery of the photos I took that day. There’s a bit of everything. Enjoy!

I enjoyed this day very much, especially now that I live in a new country where there isnt summer all year round . Iim starting to appreciatte and enjoy what each season has to offer. Soon I will have the opportunity, for the first time, to photograph winter. But for now we still have a little more summer to seize.

Invisible Cameras

Photography changes the way we see things. Everything shows details that weren’t there before, the features of a face become obvious to our eyes, objects have new angles and it even becomes possible to photograph a personality.

The light no longer looks the same either, now it has tones and meanings. It can be happy, sad, melancholic, anxious or peaceful… now the light has moods.

And now I take photos with my eyes. I walk down the street and imagine how would I photograph that girl with green eyes, freckles and red hair. The framing, the light, the contrast, the colors and the final picture in one blink.

That lady and her small yorkshire sitting in the park, pose to my invisible camera and I take their picture to demonstrate “how things resemble to their owner” as that old Disney movie reminds me.

Taking photographs with the eyes is a great exercise that eventually becomes inevitable. It comes with the package of being a photographer. It’s about feeling so passionate about something that you can’t go by a day without it. Just as the musicians playing invisible instruments, not having a camera doesn’t mean no pictures will happen.

And this is great because it helps to develop a vision, a personal style. And what better place to do that than in our minds? Viewing photographs everywhere trains our eyes, and, by doing so, the image processing occurs in our heads, opening infinite possibilities of editing that can then be applied to reality.

This practice will help to be more clear about what we want and where can our images go to.