Sunday, April 20, 2008

"it's uphill now"... - someone tells me... 25 km done, more than 50 to go, I'm leaving the 1'st assistance zone of a mountain bike marathon...


I've spent the last days looking at weather forecasts... The predictions changed from heavy rain showers to rain showers and back to heavy rain showers... In reality after one and half hour riding in the rain the difference does not matter anymore... I'm soaking wet and freezing from the waist down... Not just from the rain, but also because most of my time was spent riding on enormous mud puddles...

My altimeter shows a little bit more than 300 meters, and in front of me all I see is a cloud formation hiding my next destination at around 1000 meters... The rain storm continues as I go up... At 850 meters the rain turns into hail... I can feel the temperature going down as my feet get colder and colder... This makes me think about Nuno and his last reports from the mountains in south America, the sensation that I'm still galaxies away from his efforts, lead me to look up and keep on going...

Near the top the weather clears a bit... For a couple of kilometers the trail is more or less straight, as I increase the speed trying to warm my legs, I feel like I'm sprinting on the top of my world... At a distance I can see some of my usual photography spots... The light is amazing... I stop for two minutes and take a couple of photos with my cell phone... I look around and see water flowing down the mountain all around me, "this feels like seeing inside of one of my images" I think to myself...

"Some days we leave home in the rain, thinking how insane we are... Some days we come back wet and tired... Some days we feel like having a soul as big as the world..."

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

"I have to concentrate on building my web site"... - I have said this millions of times, but it seams that there's a cosmic conspiration that prevents me from doing so...

Actually the fact that building websites is more on the software side that on the photography side explains why instinctively I tend to spend my free time around photography instead of concentrating on building a web site... Still i can't help but thinking that ultimately my message as a photographer wont be spread out to the world otherwise...

There's a saying in Portugal that states something like "there's no two without three"... So here it is: my 3'rd blog that I hope somewhere in the future will turn into my photography website...

Some of you may ask, what's the difference from my three "so called personalities", well I'm the same person, and as everybody else I have different mind sets...