Živé sochy - Living statues in Náměstí Svobody

Last Sunday there was a contest of  living statues or živé sochy, as it is said in Czech language, in the main square , known as Náměstí Svobody, in the city of Brno.
When I was informed about this event I asked my self, uhm... now how I do I take it? The options I had were:

A) Go and snap the "statues" in a journalistic style. Try to catch how the people interact with them, uhm....  no.

B) Simply portrait them in full body with the buildings, people, etc as a background and in post production change the colors to give them a "sculpture look". Uhmn.. no either, It would had not worked because a good photo of that kind depends on factors I cannot control as the background (it could be ugly or do not match  the statue look), people waking around, etc plus the idea that it would look very similar to many other photographs out there with the same subject.

C) Last one, take a reflector or diffuser, place it behind the subject, as a background, to isolate it from the context and make the photo so I can have just the statue and nothing else to distract.

I liked the last one the most, however it would not be so easy. I did not have anybody to help me to hold the reflector behind the model so I would had to do it. How? carrying with me a tripod or stand like this. Uhm...backpack with camera equipment at my back plus a bag with a tripod and a reflector on the hand, heavy package... no other option, when you really want to do something, you do it.

So I went for it. The square was crowed because there was too a marathon competition. The statues were quite close to each other by a stage where there was a show and me trying to walk between the people to reach the statues. I think I must had been a kind of show, someone just appearing between the people setting a tripod with a reflector, pick a "big" camera with a "big" (my 70-200mm) lens, move around and start to shoot a person pretending be statue.

Everything was going fine until I realized there was another photographer, pretty, by the way, and  I think was a serious hobbyist for the kind of lens she had that was taking taking "advantage" of my setup and making her own photos, I don't mind if someone just snap some shoots but she was doing it with every statue where I set the reflector! so where is her creativity I tough, I mean  if  in any kind of art the goal is to try to be original or come out with something unusual why "steal", I don't mean I am the first with this idea but in that context was my effort to carry and set-up all by self. At the end I did not say anything, being a street show actually give to everyone the freedom to take photos whenever and however of what they want. The good part is that, her action lead me to change my original idea. If at the beginning I had tough with the reflector make a frame inside the photo to isolate it from the environment I decided to avoid it completely simply  extending the reflector edges with the magic of Photoshop.

The results are these, hope you like it.

The cyclist.

 

The flautist.

A virgin or saint?

 

Another flautist.

The musician.

The unemployed.

Who do you think was the winner?

Conceptual portraits - Self portraits.

Lastly I have been working in a series of portraits of women. Portraiture is not a new field for me but this time I wanted to make images that have some mystery or intimacy however during the process I realized that these images were actually more self portraits than portraits of my subjects/models. I became aware that I was not trying to "catch" their  personality, instead I was expressing myself trough someone else face/body/sex gender.

The results are interesting and make me think.

Lisbon Technicolor.

Today I want to share some more photos from my trip to Lisbon.

These two are the sign to show the toilets in the Berardo Museum, collection  of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Cool way isn't it? 

These are statues from The castle of Sao Jorge. 

And the Belem tower, an incredible construction from 1515.

And to finish more graffiti!!!

Choosing the right photography website for you.

Recently a friend request my advice about what company to choose for her first  photo website. Companies like livebooks, creative motion design, bludomain, aphotofolio, etc are good examples of the diversity of options in design and prices a photographer have today. My favourite in matter of  design is Creativemotiondesign.com and aphotopholio.com, each one with their own benefits and disadvantages.

Personally I would recommend the guys from photoshelter. They offer primary an online archive, which is good because you can always access to your original files wherever you are plus some e-commerce options (it means you can sell you photographs as prints or rights managed, straight from your website), unlimited galleries and templates to show your work. So instead of have to prepare you images, re-size them, upload them and then add captions and keywords, simply upload your final file, and photoshelter does the rest (they don't add meta data for you) but the system take it from the iptc info in your file.  If your photo is a .tiff of 200 mb, no problem, and .psd with multiple layers, easy.  They support around 400 formats. As well you can deliver your photos to your clients, friends via private galleries or password protected. Plus some other features like sharing to social media (facebook, twitter, etc), discount coupons for clients and you can customize the templates or integrate them into your existing website  if you know some html or css language.

So why pay, $ 20 or a higher fee just for a website design. If as a photographer all is about the image, keep it simple, Show your images, have the option sell them online and the most important thing  have a back up!!! your hard drives can die, your dvds scratch.

Here some samples, right now my website looks like this:

But I can change it to:

 or:

If you have some galleries that would like to group together, so you can create a collection:

The images can shown in thumbnails:

or in a flash slide show like this:

If you like it you can grab it and paste it on your own blog.

You can buy some photos too:

All from one place.
And of course the password protected galleries: Pictures of a pretty girl. Want to see it? guess the password ;-) is not hard (sorry nothing in life comes easy). I use this option mainly for family photos, as my parents live in Peru and me in Czech Republic, they want to see photos of their grandson,  for me is easy, upload, copy to a gallery which updates in the moment and that's all. They already have the link so they only have to look at it to see how their beautiful grandson is growing.

I think it is the best option out there. I use it to back up my priceless family photos, project files and  of course to show my professional work.
In the other hand if you cannot afford a monthly fee or simply  do not need all of that I would recommend you Creative motion design which I use too for other commercial work but honestly give a try to photoshelter, you will love it.
Ready for it? using this link will give you a discount when you join or share this code with your friends: CA2LX24B6 to use when joining, don't be selfish, everybody likes to save. :)

Ah, by the way, my friend is still thinking about it, some people is so hard to convince.

Lisbon, a marvellous city.

Today I was checking my archive from last year and I found these photographs from my trip to the city of Lisbon for my exhibition of my series Chemigrams in the art gallery Colorida.

They are snapshots of the city, nothing special just the way I over saturated  the colours that  make them look unreal or artificial and I like that effect. Lisbon is wonderful, I really loved my stay there, it have many places to visit and the night life is great too.

This is a cool example of how to deal with the graffiti, an open "Urban gallery".

Of course graffiti artists cannot be stopped and they will continue to the walls as their canvas.

What really surprised me was to find in the metro these mosaics, there more with more motive but these are my favourites.

Aren't they great?

And finally some random stuff.

This is the coolest instruction car I have ever seen.

If you get a chance to visit it, don't miss it.

Light painting.

Painting with light is a fun technique that gives great results. It is called painting with light because this is what you are actually doing while taking the shot - painting with light.

It is not needed an expensive camera, a camera capable of long exposures is more than enough. This series was shoot with a film camera (Nikon FM10) but if you really want to get the most out of the shooting session, use a digital camera. You will be able to see the results in "real time" and make corrections as you go.

You will need too a tripod or a place where to put your camera and this stays still. A flash light or torch, color gels or color cellophane (this is cheaper). And dark location, some of these photos were taken outdoors during nights without moon.

If you do not have an external lightmeter, point your torch to your subject, get your camera and aim it close to the spot light and made a reading of the light. It will likely tell you something like 2.8f, 1/4 sec, but if you want to play with different colors you will need a longer exposure, so for 15 seconds you will need an aperture of f.16. So 15 seconds for one color in one side of the subject and other 15 for other color in the other side (like the photo of the man's head in red and blue) so a total of 30 seconds, plus 10 of changing gels let's make an average of 45 seconds at f.16

After you set your exposure start with one color first, lets see the horizontal photo of the lovers, you see two colors, yellow and red. In this case I started with the yellow gel and moving the spot light up and down so the light will be uniform on the lovers, once I finished with the yellow, I turn off the torch change gels and turn it on but now pointing to the background. Because I did these photos on a mechanical camera I used to set it up in bulb and once finished I stop it.

There are no limits for this technique, start playing around and you will be surprised with what you will get.

 

 

Brno, Masquerade 2009

I have rescued this photographs from my archive, they were taken the starting of the Ignis Brunensis festival, the afternoon of may 22th, as a ceremony previous to the fireworks show. It was held on Náměstí Svobody and it was very nice, a lot of actors dressed in "weird" ways that made the show visually interesting.
Usually as a photographer I would have taken tons of pictures, but I have learned that sometimes is better simply enjoy the show without the worries of to try to get a god photo. So, despite the fact I had my camera, I decide just snap or make just the minimum effort to try to get something really good. The consequences were: I did not take a t very nice photos I could have taken, so in other words, I miss them but in the other hand I really could enjoy the show.

Brno, Masquerade 2009 - Images by Carlos Lopez

P.S. Sorry for the delay but as I said these photographs were hidden in my archive.

What The Duck: Hard news

What The Duck: Hard news

Diversity drive innovation.

In the company where I am working actually it was held an internal photo contest where one of the themes was "Diversity drives innovation" So this is a multinational and intercultural company where is easy to find people from different countries and backgrounds.

So I decided represent this diversity with my toys, one dragon called Milušk and a monkey called Jimmy. The idea can be ridiculous for some but I like the results.

Ground pollution

My personal project Ground pollution is based in a personal quest for a self-discovering and understanding. Trough pictures of the ground I look for representing and showing my anxiety, fears and doubts. The ground in this case is more than a subject if not a mirror.

The idea of call it Ground pollution is because I am in some way expropriating its nature and putting my emotions on it, so I am "contaminating" the earth, taking its real form to transform it on my own benefit. In the same way the big industries (oil extraction, mining, etc) do to our planet.

The fragments of ground I show in my photographs have colours over saturated in some cases, fact that complicate the reading or understanding of the image due to an abstraction not common in photography where the object is usually recognized at first sight. But it's this diffciculty, to recognized the subject, which allows the viewer make his own interpretation.

There is an artificial beauty on this images, but not because of that less worthy. The strong and vibrant colours in some photos are like signs of a silent sickness or wounded skin. A cheerful decadence we could say while in others of dark tones there is some little optimism, a quick message telling us that there's still hope. As if our death will come tragically one morning of summer and the medicine that will save us would be inside an old mossy bottle.

I hope you like it.