Self Portrait

A self-portrait is a representation of the artist itself, by himself physically and emotionally. I find it to be a very useful exercise since one must be as imaginative and as subtle as possible to make a statement. I find it so useful, I tend to make one each year, for the first two I wasn’t even aware of what i was doing was a self-portrait, at least for me, it comes naturally. Today i show you my 2013 self-portrait, I hope you like it.

My thoughts and ambitions for this piece was that, even though i seem confident on the outside, there’s something that wants to go out and all though i try to find this side of me with my art i can’t, i’m blinded by my confident mask.

I’ll be posting this in Photo-Challenges and in Photos because i think it’s something you should all do but it’s part of my showcase too. Thanks, see you soon!

BMX Photography

Since I was 6 years old, that’s 11 years ago I practice BMX, not freestyle, BMX race. As a result a love for the sport has grown in me and is this love that makes BMX the subject I photograph the most. Through the years I have tested many ways of shooting it, but today I’ll show you only one way, my favorite way lately. It is to capture it’s motion. In order to do that I must set the exposure time to a value rather slow, 1/60 s for example, here are some shots I took in the last month. Hope you enjoy.

Film Photography

Diving into film:

So, last month I found my dad’s old camera, 35 mm camera and I decided to give it a shot. Lately, in the digital era I kind of felt that we, photographers, broke with our past. With all the new editing tools you can reframe a picture, set the exposure right, change the colors a bit, take gazillions of pictures, etc., so, our photos are “no longer pure” to rephrase my father. The pictures shown next have not being retouched in any kind, all I did was put my watermark, they were all shot with the Canon AE-1 Program and the Canon TX in 35 mm iso 200 film, enjoy! 

Photo-Challenges: Photograph your surroundings

Today i’m giving you a challenge that I believe can help you improve your photography skills, go outside your home and walk in any direction for one hour and then come back, of course with your camera and a couple of lenses.

I did this a couple weeks ago and I found it really challenging, you don’t know what you will be shooting so it is kind of difficult, and you will be shooting more than one type of photos so you have to go prepared for anything. When i did it myself, it was rather easy because i live near the mountains so all i could shoot was wildlife and landscapes, i’ve added a gallery where you can see my pics.

In what concerns you, i’m guessing you don’t live near the mountains where there’s nothing but wildlife, you must live in the city, so what i suggest you take with you is a couple lenses. First of all, you might be shooting people and perhaps animals like squirrels or cute insects so at the top of my head i would take a lens that is like 55-250 mm, which is great for portraits and far away subjects or really tiny ones. Next i would take my 18-55 mm, this one for landscaping, a sunset view through the houses could be spectacular or a long exposure shot of car lights is also great, which comes to the next item i think you should have, a tripod, well, this is something you should always have with you when you’re off photographing since sharpness is what we want the most.

That’s it, down below is my gallery for when i took the challenge. Happy shooting and happy holidays!

 

Landscapes with 18-55 mm lens

Zoom 55-250 mm lens

Zoom 55-250 mm lens

Zoom 55-250 lens

It says: Green area, Lamirpampa Urbanisation, Achumani, how ironic, there’s nothing green about it

Zoom with 55-250 mm lens

Macro with my 55-250 mm. lens

Macro with my 55-250 mm. lens

Landscapes with 18-55 mm lens

Closer look to field in landscape 1. Landscapes with 18-55 mm lens

The first photo i took in my walk. Black and white can sometimes be better than color

Advice on how to photograph a beautiful twilight

Hello, i’m a 17 year old photographer who just joined WordPress. In this blog i’ll be posting one picture each week with it’s story and shooting process, and every now and then i’ll post an article wrote by me regarding something in particular, it may be about sports in my city, or just a photography tutorial, anyway, each week something will be posted.

This week’s post, is a photography i took last Sunday. In the picture we can see a beautiful twilight, my father and his car and the city lights. In order to take this photo i had to think about it for some time, I had to think quickly though, that’s a challenge a twilight gives you, you must act quickly or it will end. At first I just wanted to photograph the landscape as it was and so i did but i felt something was missing, it was a good picture but not a great picture, that’s something I learned with the years, sunsets are and always will be beautiful but they are here every day and anyone can take its picture, you want to be different and that’s why i asked my dad to move a little his car and to stand in front of it to showcase it and be like “this is my car”. My camera was set with exposure at 1/20 sec; iso 3200; and aperture of f/5.6. The low light situation demands to have all this set and it helps to make the lights of the city also viewable. I post-processed it to crush the blacks and have a sharper image of the silhouettes.