Multiple Fernando Pessoa - Photo: Mário Pires

Yesterday was Fernando Pessoa birthday, so i made a little homage to his 3 best known heteronyms.

I used Camera+ to take the photos, of some book covers with his picture, processed them in Halftone and layered them in Photoforge2.

Palm tree, Photo: Mário Pires

In January 2010 i made a list of photo projects i wanted to develop in 2010, a year later it’s time to access the status of those.

Chiado Project

The “7 Visões no Chiado” project was successfully completed, It was shown in Lisboa, Vila Nova de Paiva and Coimbra (more dates coming soon). I made a series of blog posts about it. I wish to take it to Porto and back to Lisbon before the end of the year.

Prazeres Graveyard

I did three sessions on this project, and was unable to advance it further. But after i had Brenda Turnnidge review the work, i lost some doubts i had about the focus of the work. I expect to be able to schedule some more sessions in the spring.

MobileOne

I started this series with Nokia mobile phones, then i added a iPod Touch and iOS photo apps, and then the iPhone4. it’s no longer a series, it’s body of work that grows everyday! The iPhone is constatly with me and i haven’t used the Lumix in months. The camera is good enough and all the photo applications that i can mix and match give me endless creative opportunities. We can be mobile artists with nothing but this small device!

“T” Project

Postponed. Without a couple that knows how to T, it can’t be done right.

4 Cars…

I finished photographing for the project and then got some doubts about the whole series. It’s sleeping in the archives until i pick it up again and start editing it into the final form.

And for 2011 ?

Publishing some POD books is my goal, hope i can pull it off.

Before and After Science - Diptych (original and processed iPhone photo)

After roughly four months using the iPhone 4 i must say that for mobile photography it is clearly the best platform. The hardware is very good, but that’s just the base. It’s the wonderful applications that are part of the iOS operating system that raise it form good to wonderful. I take pictures with it everyday and the best part is that i can shoot, process and send it out into the world in a matter of minutes if i want it. A artist studio in my hand, a fantastic tool to create anywhere.

Here is the playlist of all the videos i made during FMM 2010 and a selected choice of photos in a Best Of set.

Staff Benda Bilili with a full house at FMM Sines

I started covering the FMM Sines festival in 2005, half a decade of photographing a festival that has had 11 editions. This year besides photographing concerts i also filmed and send photos live using a Nokia N97 and e-mail. I will make a post about it.

António Colaço from the blog Ânimo did a short interview about the “7 visões do Chiado” exhibition (in portuguese).

António Colaço do blog Ânimo entrevistou-me acerca da exposição “7 Visões no Chiado”. A ele o meu obrigado.

Visão 3 - Poeta Chiado

Texto de Apresentação da Exposição “7 Visões no Chiado“

O Chiado é uma das zonas mais emblemática de Lisboa. Há muito que está presente nas letras portuguesas e faz parte dos hábitos da capital. Muitos dos seus ex-libris são igualmente lugares comuns fotográficos.

Ao aceitar o desafio de fotografar o Chiado, apenas tinha a certeza de que não queria caminhar por trilhos já demasiado pisados. Não tendo pretensões a originalidade, escolhi tratar o tema de modo a reflectir sobre as dúvidas que sinto em relação ao papel da fotografia como “descritora” da realidade e às falhas desse modelo.

Porquê escolher um único ponto de vista quando podemos ter vários ? Acredito que um dos papéis da arte é o de mostrar que a realidade tem muitos sentidos, muitos mais do que aqueles que os sentidos nos revelam. Espero apenas contribuir para que possam descobrir maneiras diferentes de olhar o Chiado.

Página do Facebook

“7 Visões no Chiado” Presentation

Chiado is one of the most enjoyable places in Lisbon, it has been like that for centuries, and it’s most memorable spots are also the more photographed.

When i accepted the challenge of photographing the theme, i was sure that i did not want to travel the same roads as everybody else. I didn’t tried to be “original”, i just wanted to reflect the doubts i have about the role of photography as a rendering of reality.

Why choose just one point of view when we can have multiple ones ? I believe that one of the roles of art is to show us that reality has more to offer us than what the senses tell us.

Facebook Page

Visão 4 - O eléctrico vermelho

A exposição está oficialmente inaugurada!

The show is open!

After 3 photo sessions, i found myself with hundreds of photos and a short time to edit the whole thing into 7 photos that could satisfy my urge for achieving the absolute best photos i could create.
I had to organize each file with layers, and groups, so that editing could not turn into a nightmare. In terms of photoshop workflow it only involved moving, scaling and rotating the images on the different layers. Every move i made on each layer would affect the overall composition, so the final photos took a long time before it reached the form you can see on the walls.
The files where between 1,3GB and 3,5 GB, hopefully my iMac was able to cope with these files without failing. After the work was done, i resized to the final dimensions, flattened layers and send the files to the printer.

Esta sexta-feira vai decorrer a inauguração da minha exposição “7 Visões no Chiado” e quero aqui fazer o convite a todos os leitores deste blog a estarem presentes.

Local: LiberOffice Chiado, Largo Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, Nº 16 – Lisboa

Horário da inauguração: Sexta-feira, 26 de Fevereiro de 2010 às 18:30

Facebook: Página do evento

Deixo-vos com o texto de apresentação da exposição:

O Chiado é uma das zonas mais emblemática de Lisboa. Há muito que está presente nas letras portuguesas e faz parte dos hábitos da capital. Muitos dos seus ex-libris são igualmente lugares comuns fotográficos.

Ao aceitar o desafio de fotografar o Chiado, apenas tinha a certeza de que não queria caminhar por trilhos já demasiado pisados. Não tendo pretensões a originalidade, escolhi tratar o tema de modo a reflectir sobre as dúvidas que sinto em relação ao papel da fotografia como “descritora” da realidade e às falhas desse modelo.

Porquê escolher um único ponto de vista quando podemos ter vários ? Acredito que um dos papéis da arte é o de mostrar que a realidade tem muitos sentidos, muitos mais do que aqueles que os sentidos nos revelam. Espero apenas contribuir para que possam descobrir maneiras diferentes de olhar o Chiado.

Até sexta.