Blue Little Guy

2009-11-16T00:01:00.001Z

"photography is a lonely pursuit..." - Another post in Bruce Percy's blog, that I feel describes pretty much what I feel about photography and a series of other areas in life…

Since I can remember I've always had a tendency to enjoy my own company… A series of coincidences lead me to travel alone for a long time even before taking photography seriously…

(...)

It has been a while (several months) since I wrote the previous paragraphs… Today while riding alone in the rain I told myself I had to finish this…

Whenever you push the envelope beyond whatever is felt normal by the average society you're left alone… Landing in burning political situations at work... Riding at the head of a peloton facing the wind and telling yourself that the ride has just began when everybody has gone home... Or even lying in an isolated beach, looking at the stars and hoping to get another star trail image…

Certainly these situations will result in images that awe you your friends and stories that may draw some interest or even inveigh, but the truth is there's much more behind a nice image or adventure story than just doing it out of nothing…

2009-11-15T23:49:00.003Z

"welcome back from you vacation!..." - A common statement I get whenever I come back to the office after a business trip...
Sadly, the main purpose of my trips is not photography, mountain biking or any adventurous activities... Sometimes I have time for myself, most times I don't... Sometimes I'm lucky and I'm able to take advantage of the phew moments I have, most times I'm crashed by pressure and come back home without much...

2009-10-29T21:12:00.003Z

"your registration in Transportugal 2010 is confirmed..." - it's been several weeks now, everyday I told myself I should take some time to write about this, but for some reason I did not…

I'm back to the Poconos now… Coming here for a week seamed like a good idea for beeing able to organize a series of things (blogs included)… For some it worked... As far as writing goes it did not…

Having spent the week inside windowless conference rooms means that my photography does not have much to say either…

So… Tomorrow I'm flying back… I really have to write about the race… But all there is to say is… I'll try to go through every single meter of it this time…

2009-09-22T17:42:00.002Z

"well, everybody wants you up to speed and your mind is still focusing on photography or cycling..." - The answer I got from an overseas colleague after complaining about my 1'st days back in the office… Two weeks have passed and I'm still looking for balance… Thinking about photography and cycling is unavoidable… Both require some kind of balance… Both force me to balance my life...

Strangely (or not) In the middle of this quest for balance, lies a huge desire for breaking it and flying away…

2009-09-07T00:11:00.003Z

"we'll be landing in Lisbon in 25 minutes..." - The captain makes his last announcement before landing... For me this sounded much more like a "welcome back to reality"... Wait a minute... How did I get to that point?... Well, I spent another 3 weeks traveling through some of the US national parks I still did not know... In a heartbeat, I've experienced the highs in Rocky Mountain, seen a bit of every other park with a twist of Iceland and almost got ran over by a bison in Yellowstone, stood in the same place as Ansel Adams in the snake river overlook at the Grand Tetons, looked up in Arches, looked down in Canyonlands, chased the fading light in the Monument Valley, met ancient spirits in Mesa Verde, struggled for finding my own vision of the Great Sand Dunes (and probably failed) and touched the sky at Pikes Peak...

I needed this... Forgetting what weekday it was... Being far... 3 weeks, more than 6000 km, 75 rolls of film, more than 100 4x5 sheets... No cell phone, almost no Internet... And unfortunately no blog posts with details...

2009-06-30T23:37:00.006Z

"this is not a bicycle race... this is mostly about your capacity for supporting long periods of time in isolation..." - it's been almost two weeks since the initial briefing of the Transportugal, this also means it's been almost a week since it finished...

What have I been doing during the last days?... Well... 1'st let me tell you how it was... (in case you didn't notice, here comes another long story - the longest ever...)

Day 1: "try to sit down and stretch your legs" - I've just finished the 140 km stage and I'm suffering with cramps all over my legs, someone takes me off the bike and I stay in the ground for a long time before being able to stand... This has been the hottest riding day of my life and my worst fears where confirmed with the evidence that my body wasn't prepared to withstand pedaling in a roller coaster and supporting 30+ temperatures... In the middle of this, breaking another chain looks almost a non issue (fixed in less than 5 minutes)...

The landscape was amazing... And I still can't describe the emotion of seeing the Douro river down in the valley 10km before the finish line... After being able to stand I asked for a massage and hoped for the best during the following day...

Day 2: "you've already been disqualified, you should stop for the day and keep your energies for tomorrow..." - After pedaling 100+ kilometers in hell, I'm advised to stop... And... I do... The day didn't start very well, I barely ate breakfast, my pulse was so accelerated that I was feeling like riding for long hours even before I touched my bike... I forced myself to eat but I felt like my stomach wasn't working and my body wasn't receiving any kind of nutrient... At a certain point the temperature was so high that I could feel the wheat raising from the ground and burning me from bellow while the sun burned me from above...

I know that whatever we do there will always be circumstances that will throw our limits to another dimension and up to this point that day was the closest I'll ever get from riding in a furnace... I knew that in those conditions I'd start having cramps sooner or later and by km 60 there they where... As usual cramps are not a big issue unless I have to put my feet in the ground (I'm ok when I'm pedaling) but at km 85 I felt like my whole body was shutting down, and when my legs stopped and I had to place my feet in the ground it felt like the world was about to end for me...

I still don't know what made me reach km 100... My brother was silent, Nuno told me something on the lines of "you aren't stopping unless you puke"... Honestly, when I stopped at the last checkpoint, not finishing a stage didn't look the worst that could happen to me at that point...

Obviously I don't remember much about the landscape we crossed, I took some pictures during the 1'st 20 km, but after that most of my memories are from cramps, inability to digest and looking at the GPS all the time hopping for the stage to end...

At night I asked myself if it was possible that months of training had been exhausted in a single day and I was doubting I'd be able to reach the end... Both my trainers looked worried on the phone... Leonor finished the call telling me: "if you fall and feel like you can't get up, call me... I'll shout so loud that you'll be back in your bike in a heartbeat!!!"...

Day 3: "this almost looks like one of our normal riding days" - Nuno comments that we're riding like we usually do... We're crossing "Malcata" a mountain range with near vertical ascents, descents to match and al combined with dangerouslly loose pavements (somebody mentioned that the sensation is like riding over marbles - could not find anything closer than this)... And yes, for the 1'st time in the race we're really having fun...

We're not thinking about the temperature, nor the cutout time, my heart rate looks normal and although I feel that 75% of my strength is gone, I'm confident that we'll finish the stage... But we don't... Everything was fine except the time we spent in café's having cold drinks and enjoying a bit of air conditioning...

Anyway... Everything seams to start working... I have another massage by the end of the day to play on the safe side and wish for a calm night of sleep...

"Malcata" is probably one of Portugal's best kept secrets... The memories of riding "up there" gave me energies for continuing and finding out what else would be there during the remaining days...

Day 4: "I'm so sorry for you... Do you have enough water?" - Jacqueline asks me if I have all I need for surviving before leaving me on the trail... The day was going fine… I was physically stable, emotionally confident, temperatures were coming down, and the last stretch of the stage crossed a series of trails that I'm familiar with and that score among my favorite…

Out of nowhere a rock hits my rear derailleur breaking it along with the bicycle frame… I tell my brother not to wait for me although he insists to (at least one of us should finish the stage) and try to walk the last 10 km of the stage... After 8 km it's clear that I wont be able to finish the stage on time…

In case you ask yourself how does it feel to break and expensive bicycle and what crossed my mind while walking 8 km after pedaling 90+… I'll probably disappoint you by saying: nothing much… My mind was empty… I noticed that by walking I was seeing things in the trails that I didn't while flying through them…

Of course I considered my options. The best was something on the lines of finding a way to get back home for getting my other bike and joining the race in the next day… I'd loose at least one stage... Resting one day was some sort of a conflict: a part of me would not mind to rest, but at the same time...

Day 5: "man, you're going to remember about this forever!... " - Little Joe, a former XC racer and a self proclaimed adrenalin junkie is amazed with my (almost film like) story… Indeed... 24 hours ago I had a broken frame and no solid idea on how to continue… How did I go from there into finishing the longest stage (160+ km) in the competition without any disruption???… Well, long story short: it was pure luck…

A not so short version is that my owner was there when I broke the frame because Vitor Gamito (one of their racers and a former winner of the Portuguese tour) was doing that stage for marketing purposes… My intention is not to go into publicity, but they where spectacular, not only for taking my bike to the shop to be repaired, but also by leaving Vitor's bike with me so that I could continue…

Ok... There was no excuse for resting, so... There I was in the next day ready for the longest stage in the race...

This day was somehow a turning point for me: I'm not much into numbers, but I admit I'm attracted to large distances and this stage scored high in my anxieties and desires before starting the competition, today I can't understand how could the idea of skipping it cross my mind… I did not feel the day or the distance going by except for the last 10km where I felt my energies where going down by the minute... Anyway... A bit later than expected… Something was telling me that things had started to flow…

Day 6: "thank you..." - After crossing the finish line another racer, thanks me for leading during the last stretch of the stage…

140+ km of head wind and some rain makes us feel that we're always going up… Still this was the best stage up to the moment… I spent the last kms enjoying the landscape going by at a fast pace while thinking to myself that I wouldn't mind riding a little more…

In fact if there was any defined reason for me to do something as crazy as this it would be the desire to find out if there can really be peace in me when everything seams to be playing against my odds… It's probably difficult to explain how can someone be in a Zen state after riding for almost 8 hours but believe it or not this paid for every bit of effort and pain I had to endure up to that moment including riding in a bike that was much harder on my back than mine...

Day 7: "the bad thing about going down is that we'll have to go up again..." - A fellow rider comments about our arrival to the mountains after ridding for 2 days in the "plains"...

I used quotes because there are no real plains along the course, someone mentioned the concept "Portuguese Flat", meaning that we're always going up or down although there may not be difficult ascents, still we're pretty much far away from the concept of flat trail found in other contexts...

I recall thinking to myself that at least in the mountains we were shielded from the wind… And at least I had my bike back…

When climbing through hidden valleys I found the strange sensation of riding in silence again without the constant sound of the wind chant in my hears, but I could not forget Antonio's comment that west winds are responsible for temperatures going down in Portugal because they bring air masses from the sea, so I guess head wind was a blessing and not a curse during the last 300km...

Anyway, we're getting to the point where pedaling becomes routine… Up, down, wind, strong rain showers, whatever… There's just something pulling us forward, making our legs move beyond our will, pain is a recall from the past, suffering is forgotten… We're just mixing ourselves with the rhythm of the earth that moves beneath us… Thoughts come and go in bursts and in the middle of it all I can't believe this will finish in less than 24 hours…

At a certain point rain showers become stronger and for the first time I feel cold, I'm wondering that using a sleeveless jersey was probably not a good idea for the day… I get out of my Zen state for a moment and anxiety kicks in…

While riding through a sequence of mud pots I do a stupid move while looking at the GPS and I fall… My head hits the ground, I tell myself that it's probably time to retire my old helmet… I've a scratch in my left knee but it does not look too bad… I get back in the bike pedaling harder than I did before, throwing myself at mud pots and small rivers, trying to heal fear with adrenalin and mainly trying to stay warm…

After, some km I have to stop for healing my knee as it had not stopped bleeding… I use a pain killer for the 1'st time in the whole week… And up we go… After going up through the biggest ascent in the whole week ("Serra de Monchique") under a strong rain shower I'm ok again...

Day 8: "this is it… you've reached the end..." - Antonio greets me at the finish line… I'm happy for reaching the end, but at the same time I'm sad it finished… To be honest I'm in one of those "what am I going to do now" mindsets...

Today I rode alone most of the time… After falling again in the 1'st kms (one of those stupid situations where we stop and forget to unclip the shoes that should not happen anymore but still does...) I rode hard for some time in order to try to get my mind off the fear mindset I usually dive into whenever I fall… I stopped only once in order to refill my camelback and kept pedaling…

I remember asking myself why to rush if everything would be over by the end of the stage… For the 1'st time I think about my life outside the race… How far everything was for one week… How far are the emotions of this week compared to jumping into burning projects in the end of the world… How far have gone my notions of effort, pain and suffering… And above all what do I really value after going through all this...

My thoughts would burst in various directions stopping only when a rocky or sandy section would remind me that I should concentrate on my riding… As soon as the pavement become less rough my legs would proceed on their own and I'd get back to my thinking state…

Epilogue: it took me more than a week to start writing this, and more than two for finishing, this is probably because for some strange reason I wanted to give my mind the chance to concentrate on something else…

In the meanwhile I went back to photography, 4 wheeling, wine, I even tried to read through my backlog of photography magazines… One thing is for sure: The race was not an end as it might seam considering all the training and preparation I went through… In fact, a couple of months before starting I was conscious this would be more of a beginning and that nothing would look the same afterwards… I couldn't be closer...

It's impossible to describe the amount of suffering I went through during the 2'nd day, it's even harder to explain what made me continue on those conditions, so is explaining my happiness during the last kilometers of the 6'th stage and summing it all: It's difficult to summarize and explain how I feel about the whole experience…

The closest I got to is saying that my race looks like one of those pictures that most people consider perfect and unattainable, but that I know there's something making them less perfect that prevents them from figuring in one of my portfolios…

Just like unperfected pictures make me go out over and over again in the pursuit of something that eases my desire for completeness, the 30km that I did not rode pull me forward into continuing and going through it all again…

Now I'm even more aware that there are so many variables in to play that nothing can ensure that I'll make it in the next try… And again this sounds like going back over and over again to the same place looking for the perfect image and enjoying every piece of the process…

By that 6'th day I was sure that riding just for the sake of it in some kind of Zen mindset, would be addictive and that I would have to go back and look for it over and over again… This is just like the process of visualizing an image that may never hang on my wall…

Choosing the best place to place my tripod and going through all the steps for setting up my large format camera while forgetting whatever goes on in my everyday life is more of a small episode in a big journey rather than a step that will certainly take me to the perfect image…

For those of you who need to rationalize from time to time, what I mean is that I'll have to do this again... I may fail again and again before succeeding and if I succeed my goals will probably shift forward in order to get me going again…

We'll see...

2009-05-27T18:49:00.003Z

"so, are you ready for the job?..." - this is one of the most common questions I've been asked during the last weeks…

Last saturday I stopped here during my last training session before the Transportugal. This place has the special aura of being some kind of vortex where both my photography and mountain biking come together…

Leaving the bike on the ground I asked myself the same question: "am I ready?"… Obviously I don't have the answer, I practiced hard over the last 8 months… But I know that during the next week my limits will be pushed to beyond whatever I can imagine… So only time will tell…

Today, after leaving my last indoor training I kind of felt like being back to my college days when closing my books before going to sleep in the night before an exam… My muscles feel numb just like my mind felt void on my college days… With experience I knew that my mind would burst in knowledge as soon as the teacher placed the exam in front of me… I also hope my body will burst with energy next Sunday, but this time I hope more… I hope that energy burst to last for the following eight days…

I won't be writing more until the end… I'll probably scribble some thoughts in my paper book, or probably not… I'll probably create some images as I traverse the country from north to south, or probably not… I decided not to push myself over the single goal of reaching the end, so whatever I have when I finish (or when I give up) will be whatever I'll have for sharing…

After a comment in this blog regarding the book "what do I talk About When I Talk About Running" by "Haruki Murakami" I finally had the chance to read it, I still did not finish, but in the 1'st couple of pages there's something that I think will summarize the book for me: the author mentions that in order to survive the effort runners keep on repeating some king of mantra to themselves…

I never rationalized about this, but I have my own mantras that I keep on repeating to myself when riding. Sometimes I just remember about RPM music, sometimes I repeat my trainers mantra that "the human body is a survival machine", sometimes I repeat mine by telling myself to "do your own race" - as I know how I feel but I don't know how other riders feel - and finally I'll have a new one from the book: "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional"…

I know that most people don't go beyond the picture in my blog posts, and this one is already too long and hard to read…If you got to this point you must be survivor and that has to mean something, doesn't it?

2009-04-22T14:24:00.006Z

"are you a professional photographer?..." - Whenever we hear this from a policeman or park ranger we know what's coming: By looking at our equipment someone is assuming we're pro's and we'll make tons of money by selling the images we're creating…

(I should warn you: this is not my typical posting stile, but the current situation of Portuguese natural parks made me feel that something had to be written)

Personally I never had serious issues when photographing in Portuguese Natural Parks, but the situations described in the beginning of the post are common. Over the time the Portuguese authority for the management and conservation of natural areas (ICNB - Instituto da Conservacao da Natureza e Biodiversidade) has taken an arrogant attitude towards nature photographers, by limiting their activities while refusing to establish an open dialog policy that would probably benefit everybody.

The situation reached an insane level when ICNB published a price table that targets some activities that take place in natural areas. The table is not only unclear about what a "photo shooting session" is but also imposes prices that are impossible even for professional photographers to withstand… This means that a blind and straight forward application of such a table would make if impossible for someone to enjoy the beauty of Portuguese Natural parks through photography.

Responding to this situation a group of Portuguese photographers sent a letter to ICNB by March 16'th 2009, you can download the English version of the letter here.

Today, 22'nd of April 2009, Earth Day, the letter still did not have any answer…

The image in this post was created back in 2004 in "Praia da Ursa" a part of the "Sintra/Cascais Natural Park"… Living less than 50km from this place, I can't enumerate the number of times I've been there… Although I don't feel I'm doing anything wrong whenever I go there it seams I'm breaking the law whenever I do…

Don't get me wrong I don't mind paying a fair fee for visiting natural areas, specially if I feel that my money will be used in the conservation of the area… I just feel that for this case the fee is unfair and unclear and so is the purpose this money will serve…

2009-04-17T14:00:00.000Z

"we can never have too much water"... - The sentence is almost a cliché… We all know that our body is more than 70% water, what most of us don't know is how much do we really need…
Previously I talked about conscience and how that evolved with my current level of physical training. Notably a big change is my increasing awareness of my own body as a biological system and not just something mechanical that's attached to my brain…

Still I don't know how much water I really need… I just try to have as much as I can…

Tomorrow I'll be riding my longest marathon ever (160km)… The weather forecast tells me we'll probably have mud and rain… Yes this will probably be too much water, but I keep on reminding myself I'm still "just practicing"…

2009-03-31T09:00:00.001Z

"are you sure you're till the end on that?" - A road cyclist asks us if we're going till the end of a road cicling race on our cripled mountain bikes...

After 5 months of training (2 to go) conscience is probably building up faster than my muscles: I know I can cycle 140km of asphalt in one moorning altough not at the pace of road cyclist... I know the back tire of my mtb slips in gravel and wet rocks, but it's fast in hardpack... I know what harpack, gravel, mud and technical terrain are and how each of them can harm me... I know that my left leg dominates sprints and any other kind of fast cycling cadences wereas my rigth leg dominates ascents and any other kind of slow cycling cadences... I even know that shoulder injuries probably involve longer recoveries than leg injuries...

What don't I know?... I don't know how I'll be feeling after the 3'rd day of consecutive riding... I know that will probably be the moment my conscience will tell me it's time to stop... That will certainly be the time to turn it off... And ride...

2009-03-23T23:59:00.003Z

"so, how did the hollydays go?..." - This is a common question whenever me or one of my coleagues get's back to the office after a business trip...
Yes, traveling is the best part of my job... But associating hollydays to some of them, is just... Too far from whatever reality can be...

I almost don't remenber my last trip to the poconos anymore and that's probably it almost did not feel like beeing out... An effortless sumary would look something like: 5 days, 16 hours in airplanes, countless brainstorm meetings... Some pictures taken, but only from inside the car...

In case you wonder, I still think this is the best part in whatever I do for a living...

2009-02-18T23:21:00.002Z

"are you sure you want to go that way?" - A fellow moutian biker asked me if I really wanted to go back home alone through a muddy region...

This is another question that comes in from time to time... In photography and mountain biking, whenever we choose to take an alternative path on our own we risk to at least get sunk in mud or covered with snow...

Questions asked are more than answers rigth now... I've been practicing for longer than I can remember and the competition is still to far away... The last days look like time is stuck somewhere and the rithm is difficult to keep up with... Next week I'll have to stop in order to travel back to the Poconos without room for a quick escape to Rickets Glen...

Heck... Time will move on... And so will I...

2009-01-18T22:39:00.002Z

"tomorrow the weather will be cloudy during the morning with strong winds and snow showers during the afternoon..." - the weather forecast for tomorrow heard in the radio at the grocery store in Tignes les Brevieres...

Well this was fast… Although I knew I had planed this trip, I almost didn't feel it coming… It's always good to be back to the mountains despite the emotional contradiction of being in a place that results from man dominating nature…

Severe weather conditions reduce visibility and almost make us forget that there are man made conveniences around us… Looks fair… But probably not even close from being in the hands of nature...

2009-01-11T23:06:00.004Z

"you will suffer long and hard"... I'm driving to one of my usual photo spots while wondering how many times I've head this since signing in for the transportugal.

Probably as many times as I heard "take it easy and rest"... Every person that did it before has a special advice for enduring such an ammount of effort ranging from traininng practices, to gear, hydration, food, rest, you name it...

I know that the best preparation will probably get me to the end with the least amount of suffering, I also know that sooner or later I'll get to a point when by body will tell me that it's time to stop...

From this moment on I'll have to rely on my will to reach the end... This is why I feel I have to concentrate on images in order to detract my mind from effort and distance figures... I'm not sure this will work, but who knows... This may get to be my special advice for the generations to come...

2008-12-14T22:28:00.008Z

"What a hell am I doing here?..." - My own thoughts… Spread over time there are lots of situations when this comes to my mind…

I guess the reasons that take us to do whatever we do can be so diverse as just doing because everybody does or just doing because it makes us feel good disregarding of what others think… The strange thing for me is that although I never take to much time thinking about what lead me to do something, there are lots of situations when I'm already into extreme situations wondering about what took me there…

Two months ago, I was in Montesinho Natural Park in the north of Portugal trying to create some fall pictures. Along with the previous this fall wasn't very rainy. This meant that mushrooms where not easy to find and rivers had even less water than they did last year… After my first day along one of my favorite valleys I looked up and saw some hints that there would be a nice color display at sunset, so I drove uphill looking for a nice spot and after finding one I only stopped shooting when there was no longer light in the sky and my hands where freezing to the point I could not feel them anymore…

After packing all my gear and getting back into the car I stayed there in silence for some time wondering what would lead someone to be alone in a dirt road at 1400m with sub zero temperatures with the single purpose of enjoying the sunset… Being in this place at the north east extreme of the country looking down south reminded me that in several months I'll be in this region again, looking to the other extreme, this time not with photography as the main purpose but for starting the Transportugal (1000 km of mountain biking in 8 days, traversing the country from one extreme to the other)...

Again… Why did I get into do this?... Well I did not think much… At 1'st it looked like a good idea... Now I feel that having some kind of impossible mission in the horizon seams to give me energy for doing all sorts of positive things...

Some people ask me if I gave up photography in favor of mountain biking… It's true I'm dedicating less time photographing actively due to the time I spend with physical training… Still whatever I'm doing, I'm breathing the world around me and whatever the outcome may be the passion is certainly the same...

2008-10-21T13:22:00.005Z

"thank you for your note... yes the ryokan got the key..." - the booking service attendant confirms that the temple in Mt. Koya received the key we forgot to deliver at checkout.Those who had the patience to read my previous posts, will remember my description of our trip from Mt. Koya to Miyajima as an example on how everything goes according to expectations in Japan. The single small unexpected detail during that day was cased by me when I forgot to deliver the room key at checkout from the Henjoson-in temple…

I noticed I had the key in my pocket during the trip down Koyasan's Cable Car, and when we arrived at the Gokurakubasi station I asked the station manager if he could deliver the key back to the temple. Despite our language differences he understood my request and answered politely that he would… And so it was… And… For some reason I'm not amazed, this was the thing to expect...

Typically I finish one trip focused on the next… Not that there are no plans crossing my mind this time, but for some reason memories from Japan don't let go easily. Many have asked me about the trip, and many received the same kind of answer containing something on the lines of: "Between good and bad things Japan is still a civism lesson for everyone…"

2008-10-11T17:56:00.006Z

"You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand?"… - The 1'st "Zen koan" from Alex Kerr's book "Lost Japan"…

Besides travel guides this was the only book I took with me to Japan… The idea was to read it during the trip, but I only started reading on my trip back… Today when I woke up at 5 am due to jet lag reading the rest of the book looked like the thing to do…

While reading I wondered if I should have better read the book before or after the trip as I did. In one hand Alex's personal vision of Japan differs from what's written in travel guides in a way I found by myself to be closer to my own vision. On the other hand if I had started before the trip I would not have enough context to enjoy the book as I did…

One idea from the book is that Japan is fascinated by secrets and the quest is always more important than knowing the final answer… This means that most of my inner questions about Japan probably won't be answered, but at the same time the quest will make me wish to go back there again and again.

Like any other country Japan is far from perfect… Although being a pleasant and safe place, the country is visibly destroying it's natural beauty in trade of progress and there's a clear disconnect between the present and the past as western influences taken to extremes seam to dominate the life of Japanese people…

Kyoto is a good example of a disconnected place as far as I see it… I did not read much about the city, and I just took for granted from the travel guides that Kyoto should be the number one travel destination in Japan. Don't get me wrong, Kyoto is nice, but it's also a place where past seams to be disappearing bellow thick layers of concrete. The temples in Kyoto may be between the most magnificent in Japan, but somehow the silent and calm spirit of being in Japan does not seam to be there.

The proud owner of the Yamatake-Shõten restaurant in Takayma told me that Kyoto was a copy of Takayama, at that point I though he was exaggerating, but after arriving in Kyoto, I found out that he was just wrong… Kyoto may have been similar to Takayama in the past, but not anymore… Being small and isolated, Takayama looks much more genuine and appealing to my senses… I hope Japan will understand this on time for protecting the roots of each place...

As usual, when finishing a trip that we ready to start it… We come back thinking about the next time, but most probably the next time wont exist in the near future as there are other places to discover...

My quest is yet to be unfolded… I came back with more images that ever from any other place, but at first they look as disconnected and superficial as Kyoto was to my eyes… I'll have to give them and myself time to settle and find the way… I'll probably have to go back over and over again, but most probably my images will just show small steps... Secrets and prcecise answers don't look urgent anymore...

2008-10-08T15:49:00.008Z

"yes we can change your reservation, no problem..." - The attendant at Japan Railways tells us that she can change our reservation so that we don't have to wait one hour for our next train…In the day before I had one of my last silent meditation moments… I was at the sacred precinct in Koyasan, creating images of the temples at night. Each image took around 4 minutes so I had plenty of silence for myself. During my last couple of images (before exhausting the camera battery completely) I had the company of a monk doing his prays… I don't remember what I though about, only that my spirit was in peace…

(If you did not do so before, take a deep breath now)…

On paper, our plans for the next day looked somehow crazy (they would probably be outside Japan): Our day started at 6 am, attending the morning prays in the Henjoson-in temple where we had spent the night (as Sara said in her comment to my previous post this is something someone has to do once in life), at 7 am we had breakfast (a feast to the eye and the belly), at 7:30 we had a Taxi waiting for us to take us to the Koyasan Cable Car Station, we took the cable car at 7:45 and arrived at the Gokurakubasi station by 7:50...
At 7:55 we took the local train on Nankay Koya Line to Hashimoto, arrived at 8:55 and changed to the Nakai Rincan express departing at 9:15 and arriving in Osaka (Nankai Namba Station) at 9:44… Then walked for 6 minutes a caught the Osaka City Subway on Midousuji line (not sure about the departure na arrival for this) to the Shin-Osaka station where we had a coffee and asked our reservation to be changed from the SHINKANSEN HIKARI RailStar 461 departing at 11:19, to the SHINKANSEN HIKARI RailStar 459 departing at 10:59 to Hiroshima, arriving at 12:28…
We then took the local train on JR Sanyo line at 12:49, to Miyagimaguchi, walked for 5 minutes and took the JR Ferry Boat to Miyagima (I'm also not sure about the times for these, but probably nobody's reading this to this point)…There you go… 437 km… Everything as expected, except for the early arrival due to the reservation change granted as something completely normal… Outside the spiritual side of things this is Japan for you…
I'm writing this in the SHINKANSEN HIKARI 384 departing from Himeji at 17:59 and arriving in Tokyo at 2140 (644 km) the last leg of the trip before heading back to reality tomorrow…

2008-10-02T14:36:00.003Z

"please take off your shoes..." - The signal precedes the entrance of each temple or Shrine, and without knowing all the reasons for the ritual it just looks rigth…

I can't help thinking about what went on during the 10 years since I 1'st came to Japan. At that time I had no idea that traveling would become an addiction and that photography would also come into the equation…

I've learned through life that there's no purpose in asking why for things that just happen… I'm sure I'm glad I got to go to every place I did, and I'd like to come back from each place with images that fulfill my feeling of being there, but I never seam to accomplish this entirely…

Back to Japan, I'm not a religious person but I have to admit that I like to be around and inside temples and Shrines in Japan… Not just for how they look, but also for the peace they transmit and for the feeling that there's lots of room for improvement in everything we do...

2008-09-29T23:02:00.004Z

"taxi here tomorrow at 7am… ok..." - The 1'st time I came to Japan, I had some instructions from a fellow colleague, some of them where an almost funny set of topics regarding how to go from the Narita Airport to the hotel, the remaining where some interesting topics about Japan, one of them being the fact that in Japan everything works as expected…

We left our Ryokan in Nikko at 7 am, before any of the owners or servants arrived. In the day before we had asked for a taxi to pick us up at 7 am to take us to the train station… In Portugal there would be a considerable probability that the taxi might not be there, but in this case there it was… As expected…

Japanese people act like precise pieces of a huge machine that was fine tuned to perform according to the expectations (this does not directly mean fast, and sharply, although sometimes it does)… What's amazing in the middle of this is that people keep their kindness and warmth to the maximum...

2008-09-29T07:15:00.006Z

"no, we don't see many Portuguese people around here, I know a bit of Spanish, but not Portuguese"... - The attendant at one of the Ginza shops was helpful and nice as usual in Japan, he was also fond of Brazilian food and could say some words with Brazilian Portuguese accent.

Japan is different from what I remember from 10 years ago... Probably I'm different too and this adds to the sensation of change. This time I'm seeing a country that is much more open to foreigners than before, old people don't run away from us anymore when we approach them in the street and even those who don't speak English are always willing to help.

Those who know me, know that I'm much more a "middle of nowhere person" than someone that enjoys crowded places... "crowded" could be a 1'st, a single word description for Japan... So some of you might ask "what a hell am I doing here?"...

This was not a trip we planned for a long time and in fact it all started one month before departure when all the other options we where considering did not seam to be viable... Still Japan looked like a good idea for breaking with my usual stile of large and insolated landscape pictures...

Crowded is not really close to the best word for describing Japan and in fact I'm not sure there is one... Even in crowded places there's some kind of silence that brings me back to my own thoughts, there's a sense of order and respect from all those who share the same space with us. Sometimes I wonder if this sensation of silence might come only from the fact that we can't understand the language... But I guess that's not the only reason...

2008-09-23T13:06:00.003Z

"Are you alone?... Aren't you afraid?..." - The first thing someone asked me 10 years ago, the 1'st time I came to Japan...

I remembered this today as I walked through the Narita Express train platform... 10 years ago, Japan was my 1'st business trip and also the 1'st time I traveled alone... Coming here on hollydays 10 years after that is olny casual (it hapened) but I can't help thinking about what went through my life since that time...

Japan was the 1'st of many, the start of this addiction for discovering places and was also a lesson on how different other people can be and on how things we take for granted are not always all there is...

2008-09-04T22:36:00.001Z

"This may look impossible but my car is dirtier than yours..." - A colleague comments that my scratched and beaten up 4x4 looks cleaner than her fancy car…

My answer was somewhere of the lines of "this is probably because I'm not having much fun these days"… I have no explanation for this, but sometimes I feel that my capacity for using the 24 hours of each day to my advantage does not depend only on how crouded my agenda is…

Sometimes there's some kind of rhythm that seams to make everything possible... Sometimes, the simplest task (like updating this blog) seams to take an enormous amount of energy…

Sometimes we need a plan or something in the horizon for helping us keep the focus… And many other times when we get to that point in the horizon we get that empty feeling of "now what?!"… Today I feel like I'm in this same point in several dimensions of my life...

The image you see here is part of my Canadian Rockies portfolio from 2 years ago… Along with others most of these images where still not seen by anyone outside my home office… For now they're just waiting here for the next wave in order to get out in the world...

2008-08-14T00:13:00.004Z

"ask one of our monitors at the beach what are the good spots to get into the water..." - The lady at the Surfboard Rental shop tells me about the tide at the Juquehy beach…

(image from a previous trip in 2003 at Ilha Grande ~ 200km north of Juquehy)

2 minutes after getting into the water I was thinking to myself if I should start this post with a good thing or a bad thing about Brazil, the previous title I had in mind was something like "you should not be carrying your laptop outside alone at night..."

Those who know me, are aware that I usually say that Brazil is my most hated Business Travel destination… I fact I lived in São Paulo for almost two years, and for some time I even enjoyed the experience but today I see that period as a burst of mixed feelings…

I once read a statement from someone famous saying that São Paulo is one of those places where you find the best and at the same time the worst that can be found around the world. Although I've traveled a lot I still find this place has the best Restaurants and Night Life that can be found around the globe. Still you can get out of a fancy restaurant and be shot by someone that did not eat for the last couple of days…

If you get out of the typical tourist traps, Brazil has some really fine beaches, where you can walk freely and even leave your wallet unattended without fear of not finding it when you get back… Unlike Portugal, there's plenty of room for surfing and surfers are really friendly (even when they notice your not from the place and not very skilled they're always available to help you - pretty much like mountain bikers in Portugal)... In fact I gave up surfing in Portugal due to the unfriendly and elitist character of surfers back home…

Back to the bad side, I feel that the worst part of me comes to play whenever I come to this place… I wake up in the morning before work wondering who's going the stab me in the back during the day, I deal with people that see corruption as something normal, companies that use their power to abuse their workers and keep them in fear so that they don't react, people that try to take advantage on anything anyway, you name it… As a result, I always go back home using more slain that what's normal in Portugal…

Summing up: two weeks in political hell, T-shirt stock reestablished, one hour of surfing, four waves surfed… Pictures: almost none… Sandy beaches and palm trees: yes… Caipirinhas: I stay far from them after the only real hangover in my life… Worth it? Well…

2008-07-18T03:40:00.002Z

"how much did your laptop cost?" - the customs officer at the Guarulhos Airport (São Paulo - Brazil), approaches me in a tone that suggests I'm coming into the country willing to sell or offer my laptop to someone...
This reminds me that my adventures with customs world wide would be more than enough to fill up a blog by themselves... Don't get me wrong, I understand countries need to protect themselves from parallel imports and smugglers, and in fact this has happened to me before and I was never harmed or arrested in the process... But after flying for 10 hours and waiting for another 2 before seeing my suitcase coming out of the carpet, the last thing someone needs is to have to explain something so obvious as why he's bringing a laptop into the country... Anyway, after 10 minutes of questioning and checking my passport stamps one by one, they let me go...

I know I should be writing about Brazil and what brings me to this place, but there's something else I need to mention before we talk about "Tropical Beaches and Caipirinhas"... I have a simple question that crosses my mind most times I enter and airplane: "Why do people assume that paying for a plane ticket gives them the freedom to lower they chair and crush the knees of the person behind them?"...

One does not need to be a master in biology and math in order to figure that the leg room in standard economy class areas is not comfortable for most people, due to this I never lower my chair in airplanes if I have someone behind me, and if I'd ever need to I'd ask first... This sounds like common sense to me, but what I perceive from my experiences is that I'm wrong... The correct procedure seams to be something like: lower the chair until you touch the knees of the person behind you... Then push harder until you've lowered the chair completely... If the person complains, stay silent and pretend you don't understand whatever language the person's using...

2008-06-25T18:03:00.002Z

"Where are you going on hollydays???" - This is one of the most common questions people ask each other during this time of the year...

As time goes by, my mindset goes more on the lines of: "where would you go if this was your last trip"... At the same time something inside tells me that I should be happy enough because i already traveled more that most people I know... And I just made it back from 6 weeks outside the office...

The conflict becomes even harder when I face the evidence that I've already been to most of the easy and comfortable places one can remember about, so now I'm left with the remaining 95% of the world that is not so documented and that will take some time to get ready for...

Questions come and go and usually go back to: "where do I start?..."

2008-05-27T15:32:00.002Z

"a 20 ounce Dark Sumatra with nothing in it, rigth?..." - Google's Courtesy: 20 US fluid ounces = 591.470591 ml... After a little more than a week the lady in the cofee shop allready remebered my preference...

Whenever I talk with someone from Portugal abut the things I miss whenever I'm out, the conversation will eventually go through something like: "how can someone live without our good, small and strong espressos!?"

Back home we're very serious about coffee (among others)... One thing I found while traveling is that it's usually a mistake to keep looking for the same things we have home while visiting another country...

If we insist on doing so we'll probably be frustrated as espressos elsewhere will never feel the same way they do in Portugal and we'll end missing other good things like beer, wine, bagels, cheese cake, ans yes good and large cups of coffee...

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a while waiting for a suitable picture, but for some strange reason, during the last days I've spent most of my image creating time around water... I decided to let it out anyway...

2008-05-15T17:43:00.002Z

"Any soup or salad while you wait?..." - The waiter just brought my beer and took note of my order...

It's past 9 pm and Síamsa Irish Pub is one of the few restaurants still open for Dinner...

I'm living to fast again, it's Wednesday and all I remember about since the weekend is work and sleeping from time to time... I'm in that stage when my thoughts are a mix of: "What am I doing here" and "I'd better get ready for the weekend"... I think I have referred before to the "dark side of my trips"... This is actually one of those days that make everything look darker...

"Heck, nothing is going really wrong" - I think to myself as I ask for a cup of coffee wondering if the right choice might have been just going for another beer...

2008-05-12T18:58:00.002Z

"The park entrance is free, all trails are open until sunset, enjoy your day!..." - I'm back to Rickets Glen State Park PA, the park ranger answers my request for a permit...

If I had to re-name Rickets Glen I'd call it waterfall heaven... With more than 20 waterfalls spread over a 5 mile trail with lots of intersting details in the middle, I got back with the sensation that I could live in there...

It's one of those places where you look at someting amazing, spend some time there creating images, but can't help but wonder that arround the next corner something even greater can be found... Anyway, knowing that whenever I stop at one place I'll take more than 1/2 hour to move to the next, 20 waterfalls is too much for one day... So here's another work in progress in my list...

"in case you wonder... that's me in the picture..."

2008-05-11T02:50:00.004Z

"i happen to like this... Listening to the night critters and looking at the stars"... - Maria's comments after 1/2 hour of star trails....
One year later I got back to this exact same place for more star trails... I'm almost pleased with the result, but there are still reasons do come back... Still I could not avoid a short trip back to this place, even so considering that...

"turn rigth on 9'th avenue, then arrive at your destination on the left"... - The GPS... 48 hours have passed...

Against all recommendations, once more I'm driving in New York trying to buy some equipment before driving to the Poconos...

"Sometimes a stranger has a fresher view when contemplating a whole new place than the locals do"... - I remember Antonio's words during his last workshop as I walk through Stroudsbourg...
Houses, sign-posts and even sidewalks... They all look attractive to my eyes... One more week goes by with more work than desirable, I'm finishing my writing on my 2'nd glass of merlot... The weekend is here, at last...

2008-04-20T15:05:00.003Z

"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..."

2008-04-15T19:36:00.003Z

"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...

2008-03-20T22:05:00.003Z

“AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRHHHHGGG!!!...” – My last day in Sweden, on my 3 hour drive back to Stockholm Airport… I see images jumping from everywhere I look…

Snow… Clouds, light changing from one moment to the other… Small patches of blue sky… And the clock does not stop ticking… There are kilometres to go through and a plane to catch…

I probably said this a thousand times before, but there’s something in Scandinavian light that caught me from the first time I’ve been in Sweden… I actually think that 2003 was the year that defined a lot in the person I am in a series of ways and also defined the way I look for light everywhere I go… Every time I come back I feel that this is probably the land of my dreams…

Back to reality: 5 trip days, never ending meetings, probably no more than 2 hours of picture taking… 700 kilometres of images that only my dreams will see… one year less till the end and still a long way to go…

Birthday???... Ah, yes today’s my birthday…

2008-03-18T21:00:00.005Z

"There's a Chinese restaurant across the square, here on the left you have an Indian, and close by, there's an Italian..." - In case you did not guess I'm in a small city in the middle of Sweden...

I once said something like this to a colleague before her 1'st trip: "your credit card is your best friend... In case something goes wrong you can always rent a car and drive back home"... This crossed my mind today when it took me more than one hour to find my car rental company desk at the Stockholm airport...

What if you can´t find a rental company?... Well, you'd better not be in your 1'st trip and be aware that worse things can happen... Things like getting into an hotel room and not finding the bed...

Talking about that, i finally got the car, drove for 3 hours and finally got to the hotel... The bedroom had a bed... But it was the 1'st time I got a room with a single small bed, smaller than the sofa bed from the other time but let's not talk about that...

Two days have passed, Scandinavia still has the best ligth one can wish for... I was forced to pass on two amazing sunsets before actually being able to go out and shoot... When I finally did, nature greeted me with a snow storm...

2008-02-16T22:35:00.003Z

"Can I let the visitors in?..." - I've just attached the last picture tag... And barely had time to take some pictures of everything ready...

The next couple of hours where faster than I can remember... So here it is for the ones that were there and I barely had time to talk with and the ones spread all over the world: Thank you all!!!...

Today I finally went out, to the middle of nowhere, for 15 minutes and shot one image just to get the feel of it again... What's coming next?... I'll go out to shoot again in the morning and then we'll see...

2008-01-25T13:36:00.000Z

"all you've ever wanted was ..." - this is just an extract from a song... Yes, I do hear Linkin Park and heavier stuff from time to time, mostly when I need to focus...

During the last month or so, i might have written several posts, starting with... have a great wolf day... bye, have a safe trip home... I hope we meet in India some time... you've been selected by a computer to be hand searched along with your property... i do hate Christmas and new years... i'll have a sam adams winter brew... pedantic... invisible light... coming back for a little more... this is the cover for that magazine... tell me to go...

In summary: I've been working like crazy... At the same time I'm preparing an exhibition and to elevate the odds even further my pictures made it into the cover of a magazine... In the middle of all this, I really feel I miss having time to go out and take pictures... It's been almost two months now...

2007-12-16T23:46:00.000Z

"Watch out!... The car in front of us is sliding!..." - My mate, alerts me for the car sliding from one side to the other of the road on I80... We are driving on a freezing rain storm, trying to get to New York...
The car finally stops on the right side of the road and the young girl on the wheel seams ok as we drive by... After some minutes she overtakes us as if she was driving on dry weather... I fight with myself for a couple of miles, we see another car spinning on the road... I get scared and end up deciding that we should abort our plans and drive back to the hotel...

This is the 2'nd time I pull back in two days... I can remember going through insane limits several times... Driving long distances at insane speeds, climbing alone without climbing skills and safety equipment, you name it... Today even a short walk through the woods seamed to scare me as I heard the trees cracking due to ice... Maybe I'm watching to much tv and paying to much attention to weather.com... Maybe I'm more of a grown up, than I thought I was several posts ago...

2007-12-16T05:49:00.001Z

"With the storm that's comming tomorrow, all this snow will be gone due to rain and wind..." - We're chatting with a cross coutry skier at Ricketts Glen State Park PA, it's sub freezing and we're walking on several inches of powder snow...

"This is this years first snow" - he continues - "I love winter time in this place"... I can understand him, I think to myself as we walk away... Except for our footsteps we hear nothing but silence... As usual, as I get immersed into these places I stop feeling the cold weather and my mind starts finding images on every turn of the way...

Later on, the respect for nature, trail conditions and obviously fear, made us back off after only the first one of several dozens of waterfalls...

2007-12-14T04:19:00.000Z

"but sir, this is a Lincoln!!!..." - I'm at the the car rental park in Newark airport and when I see the car that was reserved for me I ask for something different...
It was not my intention to offend of of the crown jewels of US auto industry, but the car just seamed too big and clumsy... But considering that we had a considerable amount of luggage we took it... As with any other car, after a short trip, I had forgotten about about how it looked or felt...

Until... On out fourth day in the Pocono Mountains region we where forced to leave the office on the middle of the day during a snow storm... After removing some inches of snow from the windshield, and trying to find my way out of the parking lot (it's difficult to tell where's the road when everything looks white) I drove slowly to the hotel, wishing I was driving something else... Somewhere else...

Later on I could not stay in the hotel, I picked up the camera and used it as an excuse to walk in the woods under falling snow... It's true, I tend to find myself in strange places... Kneeling down on soft snow and feeling the cold breath of nature was all I needed...

2007-12-05T01:02:00.000Z

“” We could go to the end of the world, but today we’ll just go to the office”… - This thought comes to my mind several times whenever I enter my car in the morning and turn the key…

I have written before about my contradiction of loving the pure outdoors and driving a 4x4 that pollutes more that normal cars… Driving on it to the office every day, acts as a reminder that there is a big world out there, far away from the usual maze of chaos and conference calls…

I know, there are probably better ways for reminders, but I can only act rationally during a small percentage of my time…

2007-11-19T16:55:00.000Z

“sorry, it’s my 1’st day at the job, I’ll have to ask my boss”… - I’m the only client at a roadside restaurant, and asked if they had ½ bottles of red wine…

Strange enough, this is the 1’st time I talk to someone in the last 12 hours… I spent the day searching for images, minding my own thoughts (or their absence)… Had I not found something to trigger my inspiration, I’d end up picking up one from the maze of ideas that cross my mind as I write this in my old paper book…

Being here, makes me thing about my desire of being anonymous from time to time, being the person that arrives in the night, asks for food and a glass of wine and departs into the night leaving no trace…

In fact, I’ve been doing this through life thinking that one day this part of me will be over, due to the simple fact that I’ll grow up… But grown-ups don’t climb to the top of a hill just to salute the end of another day. They don’t walk in the mud and don’t lie down in the floor just to see the trees touching the sky...

I look at my wine glass and remember that only grown-ups should drink…

2007-11-11T23:00:00.000Z

“we won’t have mushrooms to photograph this year, you know”… - António salutes me when I arrive in the extreme northeast of Portugal for one of his autumn workshops…

I had spent much of the time during my 500 km drive from Lisbon wondering about potential images, and yes much of them involved mushrooms…

It’s funny, how photography turns our instincts around… blue skies and sunshine are boring, whereas rain and ice are welcome, eating is not that important and time runs faster in the first and the last hours of the day…

For some time I tried to shoot sunlit scenes as if they where under the rain, but it’s a fact that whenever we are to obsessive in bending reality into our hard minded vision, we loose sight of what reality has to show…

2007-11-02T11:24:00.000Z

"some people have the capacity to dream, some people have the capacity to make their dreams come true..." - one of my gym trainers urges us to push our limits further...

The sentence and the situation is completely off topic, but it made me think that lately I'm a little confused on what my dreams are... It's a fact I've not been dreaming much and obviously I'm not working towards making my dreams come true... The fact that I stopped writing for some time is also a sign that I've been living too much in the real/hard/concrete side of things...

At that point, in the middle of trying my best without falling apart I tried to think about one dream that would be hidden in the deepest realms of my memories... Only one thing came to my mind: "Everest"...

What do I mean with that? Well I don't know... Thinking about it again, it's a fact that mount Everest comes to my mind from time to time... Seeing it, flying over or climbing it are possible ways of making the idea more concrete, but for now, I'll leave it as it is... The basic form of a dream...

2007-09-12T00:12:00.001Z

"the fact that this summer has been quite mild is not that bad, as we did not have as many problems with fire as we did in the past..." - I recal hearing this on tv as I drive to my home town (its more like a very small village)...

I don't know why, but I tend to think a lot about photography while driving... This time, besides fire, I'm thinking about why I don't have created a single image around my home town...

When I was young I was forced to spend the whole 3 months of my summer holidays in this place, near the geographical center of Portugal, a region known for the heat and the abundance of pine trees... Over the years I saw this region burning over and over again... The first fires I remember seeing, where just a small column of fire in the horizon, then some of them started to last days and even weeks and as the time passed by the whole area around my home town was burned several times...

I remember being small and looking up at pine trees amazed by their size... Now, the landscape is completely different most of the big trees are gone, and although this has been a mild summer, I can still see the traces of the areas that where recently burned...

Why don't I take pictures over there... Well perhaps I'm too busy when I go there, or my emotions just don't let me start...

The picture you see above was taken in 2004 at a Sequoia grove in Yosemite national park (US) during a managed fire... Over there fires are provoked in a controlled way in order to create the conditions for the survival of the giant Sequoias and to keep the forest clean... (in case you wonder, this is not what we are doing in Portugal)...

2007-07-31T14:40:00.000Z

"f#$%&$k" - My own thoughts... It's 4 am, I'm driving to "Cabo da Roca" with the intention of shooting the moon set, the sky is clear when I leave home, but when I'm 500m from my destination everything gets covered in mist...

“Why do I do this”… I’m walking down the trail to my favorite spot in the darkness, seeing only the beam of my headlamp sweeping the mist… The trail is a 300m descent into a small rocky beach with loose rocks and some difficult obstacles along the way… I’ve been to this place more times than I can remember, but yes… This time I’m scared…

Half way down to the beach, the mist starts to clear and I’m able to see the moon again… For a while I’m thinking about the multitude of texts describing moments when nature is kind to photographers and to those who dare to leave the bed at insane times… But when I really get to the beach and start mounting the tripod for my first shoot the moon gets completely covered with clouds and never shows up again…

Without the moonlight I stay in the dark for more than one hour before I see the first traces of sunshine… Still I point my cameras somewhere and wait… Heck, I’m here so I’d better create some images anyway…

At 11h00, I finally feel I’m finished for the morning… Even if the weather doesn’t help, there’s so much to do "just" with stones…

2007-07-23T12:41:00.001Z

"blue whale!!!..." - The Haukur Schooner's skipper, spots something in the horizon and before we can understand what's going on, he changes direction and rushes the engine...
I’m standing on a lamp at the bow (imagine a 50cm cube), it sounded like a good way for shooting above everybody’s heads but as the boat increases speed this suddenly becomes an odd way for training my balance… But ok, I continue looking towards the horizon and try to harmonize with the boat’s movements.

We’d already seen dolphins and a humpback whale… And after those I thought I could already go back home with stories to tell… I wasn’t much worried about pictures as I was aware I still did not have the training or the skill to do the kind of pictures I’d like to do so I was more worried on enjoying the moment…

Whales come to the surface every 5 minutes or so, sometimes I’d fire a burst of pictures, sometimes I’d just forget I was holding a heavy camera and used all my senses to try to build memories... The spray of a whale that just emerged, the sensation of its size compared to us and our boat, the surrounding sounds and and the whale songs, the cold wind, the sea...

The fact that we are almost at arms reach to the biggest animal on earth (even bigger that any dinosaur that ever lived on the planet), makes us feel privileged and humbly small at the same time… The fact that we can share the same waters makes me wonder why we are doing the atrocities we do this world… Still whales look calm and serene; they just keep on going singing their stories trough their seasonal trips around the world…

2007-07-14T00:12:00.001Z

"this is Iceland, you don't need to rush, you can stay for as much as you wish, you can even sleep in the floor if you wish to..." - The manager at the Aldan Hotel Restaurant in Seydisfjordur, an half French half Spanish globetrotter, let's us know about some of his impressions regarding Iceland's way of living...

"the only country I remember as being more expensive than Iceland is Japan" - he continues describing the first impacts he had when first arriving in Iceland…

I was in Japan a long time ago, I remember the country as being expensive, but as usual we tend to pay more attention to present situations, and yes, coin after coin, day after day Iceland almost burned wholes in our pockets…

If in one hand it’s easy to understand the reason why Iceland is so expensive as most goods have to be imported into the country… On the other hand I was never able to understand what made it possible for Icelanders to keep their high living standards… While there I was unable to understand what would be the economical activities supporting the country, as there are no obvious resources that can be sold to other countries…

Several times I told myself I’d have to investigate this when getting back, I’m writing this here so that I don’t forget to check it ;)

2007-07-11T11:24:00.000Z

"is this just me or do you also feel you're in a different planet" - another little guy, breaks the silence halfway between nowhere and Landmannalaugar...

I think that if I had to pick a moment from my trip in Iceland and forget all the others, this would be the one I'd keep...

Generally speaking, Iceland is a small country, but due to its low population rate the insulation feeling we get at times is similar to being in the large landscapes of the American South West, but with the big difference that the landscape changes much faster and looks different from whatever we've been able to imagine before...

Joining this with the added bonus of long and almost empty unpaved roads, the empty world ahead, the dust cloud we're leaving behind, the mixture of feelings from image to the sensation of driving the Paris-Dakar...

Leaving a gravel road and entering a 4x4 only road makes us feel even more far away... The road would change from sand, to hard rocky grounds, to black sand, going up and down extinct volcanoes, crossing glacial rivers... Almost touching the sky or dropping into strangely colored lakes...

We finally stopped... My mind felt as being crashed by to many sensations, it took me some time to even dare do take a picture... I eventually did, I took lots of them... but whatever I felt during these almost 200 km of road, stayed there and seams that can only be described in memories...

2007-07-09T17:24:00.000Z

"sorry sir, we only have sofa beds, only 4 person apartments feature normal beds and those are very expensive..." - I just got to Brussels and been through one of the most unreal situations I remember...

I should start by saying that I did not have any alcohol before going into the hotel...

When I entered the Hotel room, I found a living room, with a TV and a sofa and thought "cool, this must be some kind of apartment"...

Then I started trying to find the bedroom, and... There wasn't any... I still went back and forth from the living room to the bathroom, looking for some hidden door, but no... There was no bed!!!...

I finally saw a leaflet titled "how to mount the sofa-bed"... Well, I've been through lots of strange situations while traveling, but I don't remember the last time I was caught in surprise by something like this...

Almost in disbelief, I called the reception in order to figure if that was the only kind of rooms they had, but strangely enough that was the standard for the hotel... It still took me some time to find the most comfortable sofa bed configuration... But ok... By 2 am I was asleep...

In the meanwhile I was thinking about other situations from past trips, like having slept on a bedroom where I could hear cockroaches running from one side to the other, or when the hotel maid entered my room and I was sleeping naked...

So here it is: life as life can be... One more funny experience and counting...

2007-06-26T23:46:00.000Z

"all set, here's your receipt, have a nice trip back..." - I'm at the rental counter coming back home from Iceland, and yes... It's been a while...

During the last months it seams like I’ve been flying through life… work, mountain biking, photography and trips went through without much chance for thinking about what’s going on with destiny, and more important than that: what’s next...

Every post in this blog starts with some event in the context of an interaction between me and someone else. It started like this without any intended purpose, but from the beginning in seamed right… After all, my experiences with the world inspire whatever I write here…

The trip in Iceland made me think a lot about the way I feel the world and create images. I was probably to closed in my own thoughts in order to interact and describe any experiences… One thing is for sure: there is no point in mentioning that I finally finished a mountain bike marathon or that I got to Landmannalaugar if I’m not capable of expressing the emotions I went through on the way…

Through time I’ve heard people and religions praying that the trip is much more important than the final destination… But I had never considered how much of these moments I’m letting out of my writings and photography...

2007-05-15T23:59:00.000Z

“It’s past 4 pm, you won’t be able to make it to the finish line on time, you can’t continue…” – Again, I’m laying on the ground looking at the stars while attempting star trails, and thinking to myself that I still did not write about this…

During the last weeks, I had trained for this 100 km long mountain bike marathon… This is quite an event with 4500 participants, but with the big drawback that off-road trails are not big enough for so many souls and we waited for about two hours before being able to really depart… After 73 km, we were told that we could not continue as the time limit was not changed due to initial hiccups…

It’s hard to describe the emotions one goes through while cycling through a never ending maze of tracks, sometimes down bellow in hidden valleys, sometimes up above in the ridge of mountains… I was not carrying a camera, but I’m keeping a series of images in my mind…

I was really pissed when they did not let me finish. At that point I had the feeling I would be able to get to the finish, I was already over any distance I had rode before feeling fine and enjoying the ride…

Unexpectedly, this one in a lifetime event seams like routine… I’ve been riding every weekend and there are two more marathons waiting for me in the next two weekends… And what about photography you ask?... Well I’ll keep on recording images without a camera…and you’ll have to keep looking at my boring star trail shots… sorry!...

2007-05-08T22:28:00.000Z

“these are the details for your trip to Barcelona, can I issue the ticket?...” – I’m still not back to the office and I already have a new destiny… Two days and one night in Barcelona… I hate short trips… I usually spend most of the time in meetings hotels and airplanes… I usually don’t even pack a camera with me as I don’t have the chance to use it...

If you’d ask me a couple of years ago I’d tell you that Barcelona was my favorite city to live in… Nowadays it still is one of my favorite cities, what has changed over time is that my interest in urban places is decreasing…

Anyway… Here I am, back to one of my sanctuaries, with my last opportunity for shooting during this short break… Star trails under the moonlight, two cameras pointed up, the sound of waves and… A last bit of peace of mind...

2007-04-29T03:00:00.000Z

“do you want to have a beer?...” – One of yesterday’s campers invites me for a beer, actually I’ve been invited several times whenever I pass by them…
Once again I can’t stop, this time I’m driving back from my last shoot, and I’m urging to get back on time for receiving a new carpet the shop is delivering… Yes, I do have a home and I do go there sometimes… It’s also true that most times when going back I think more about the next time I’ll leave than regarding what I’ll be doing there... But I’m trying hard to have it decorated before retirement age…

I drive slowly through the last kilometers of dirt road, before touching asphalt after spending almost two days out of it…

Almost painfully, details and photo opportunities seam to jump in front of me out of nowhere, although it’s around noon the light looks as good as dusk or dawn… Just like the beer I was offered some moments ago I have to let go and force myself not to stop…

As my speed increases on major roads, fields with flowers turn into color patches that make me feel like I’m driving through a dream… I’d like to have the opportunity to remember whatever comes to my mind at these times… “Maybe I should record my thoughts as Galen Rowell did…”

Still, although feeling miserable with the departure I can’t help admitting how lucky one must be just by being able to live as I do sometimes…

2007-04-28T06:00:00.000Z

“are you the owner of this land?...” – Two campers ask me if I own the land where they had just mounted their tents…

It’s almost the end of my second day in Noudar… I’m alone shooting in this remote place, and at this point I’m trying to entertain my mind until my last attempt at doing star trails is finished…

A good and bad thing in this location is that I can bring my car to almost every spot and use it as kitchen and living room while hopping that long exposures will make miracles on my film or digital sensor…

“heck, today it’s cloudy and there are no many miracles to be expected… Well this will be a fairly good reason to come back here…” - I think to myself while eating an orange under the moonlight… - “but at least I’m here, what else could I wish for?...”

Sometimes I tell myself that I should take advantage of these moments and think more about life, but my mind seams completely void of any thought… More than shooting I’m making use of my ability of not thinking about much for a change…

2007-04-18T23:20:00.000Z

"no clouds, not to many flowers, spring is really late this year and considering the wind I wont be much lucky with macro's"... - A good thing about spring time is that I can leave the office and still have some time to drive somewhere and create images...
My mind is bubbling is ideas for the next days... And at the same time destiny seams to be organized in to conspiration for not letting me go out... The balance from what pays bills and gives me the chance to be what I am and the time I have for doing what I like is a constant field of conflict...

Every day, the sun raises and sets in a different way, tides change, big amounts of sand and stone move from place to place, seeing only a part of this feels like not witnessing life in itself... Today I'm in one of those days I can't keep from looking the rain falling outside and feeling that I'm loosing the best part of it...

2007-04-18T15:30:00.000Z

"where are you?" - a friend asks the same old question when exchanging emails... It's a fact that for those that do not see me quite often it's difficult to know how much do I travel or not...
It's a fact that with time, trips loose their special character... Some people walk or drive to their jobs, I also do, but sometimes I also take an airplane... This is so natural that I even stopped warning my family of my whereabouts... The problem rises when the percentage of people feeling as I do is only a small slice of the world population, and others feel insulted by this detached behavior of mine...

Wherever I am and as thrilling as my adventures may be, there are always the ones I miss and remember about... And so are the places I always end up going back to when I get back home, these are my sanctuaries, and although I seam to always be creating the same old images when I go there, there's something different in the emotions I bring back home...

2007-04-04T10:17:00.000Z

"i see that your photographic instincts are not driven by the beauty of what you're shooting..." - Valentin observed that although we where far from being in a perfect place I could still find what to shoot...
It may look strange, but if you look at my photo albums you probably won't find straight images of monuments or any man made land mark people look for when traveling somewhere... I don't know the explanation for this as I don't avoid these shots, I just think that there's always something else catching my attention.

My inner visions of India are more bound to people and movement than to any other detail... Even now after coming back home my biggest regrets are for not having the time to experience the contact with common people for more than a couple of hours...

The looking glass effect I described before, takes time to go away and a couple of hours outside the controlled environment of offices, cars and hotels is not enough to let go of initial fears and let destiny lead the way...

2007-03-25T18:08:00.000Z

"yes, sir you are allowed to take as many snappers as you wish"... - I had asked if I was allowed to take pictures of a temple and as always, India proved to be one of the most photo friendly places one might think off...

I'm used to expect some people to see me as a threat whenever I show up with my camera in hand... In India, people see me, but instead of fear they show the same level of interest on who I am, where I'm from and what I'm doing, that I have regarding everything I see...

From my interaction with people, and the explanations of some local friends, everyday I find out how different cultures and time evolutions can render basic instincts completely different... From my limited time here I see that the more I know, the more I understand that I'm not even close to figuring the real meaning of some of my images...

2007-03-20T19:40:00.001Z

"tomorrow is a national holiday in India, we wont be coming to work, but you may come if you wish to"... - Guess what, my birthday is new year's day according to the Hindu Calendar!...

To be honest, I usually feel like disappearing on my birthday, so being out of home is almost the best option for pretending that this "one more" year just didn't pass... And actually, if I count this way I'll probably still be bellow thirty!!!...

Frustrating as it might seam, not even on a holiday I had the time to go out... I'm in my third day in Hyderabad's Hitech City and for the first time in India, if I just look at the hotel, and the office, it almost feels like I'm in the US... Heck!... What a good way to travel somewhere and not being there after all...

2007-03-18T19:56:00.000Z

"you are not entitled to use a sit belt in here"... - It's probably the first time I travel on the front seat of a car in India, and here's another difference that just makes me think about the the distance between the several worlds I travel by...

Later in the same day, I hear something like: Surf or even going into the sea water is perceived as something dangerous here, most people will not even consider doing it... I never understood danger to be relative, but I come to the conclusion that just as we filter what we see we also filter through our perception of danger...

People here seam to be protected by some kind of special luck that prevents cars from bumping into each other and people being ran over when crossing the street... I never thought about this before but maybe this same luck also protects people in the rest of the world whenever they push their own limits... Whatever dangers there migth be...

2007-03-16T22:07:00.000Z

"sorry sir, it's past 11 pm, we can't serve alcohol anymore"... - The waiter in the hotel restaurant let's me know that I can't have a beer with dinner...

Once again, I've been spending too much time around computers, cables and dark server rooms than standard health care principles should allow to any human being... I keep on seeing everything from the confort of cars air conditioning during trips to and from the office, and yes, I'm not creating the images I'd like to...

Still and even on the most casual situations I keep on finding my questions and doubts around matters I'll probably never have the time to understand about this country... It's like being reborn again and going back to the age when everything is a novelty, but this time I'm to ashamed to keep on asking why for every new piece of information, every minute...

2007-03-13T20:57:00.000Z

"sorry to disturb you mister... please contact our ground staff regarding your luggage... we're affaid it's not on the plane"... - 15 minutes before landing the flight attendant let's me know that for some strange reason my bag stayed in Frankfurt...

Well... This sounds familiar... But still unusual, we are not on August 12'th and I didn't even do a transfer, so there must be some cosmical conspiracy that dictates something like this: me x India = lost luggage...

This time things go surprisingly well... All paperwork is done and waiting for me to sign on arrival... I'm given an indemnization w/o having to ask for it... I still had to go shopping, but ok everything looked to be ontrack... The bag was delivered to me in the hotel, w/o damage a little bit more than 24 hours after landing... at 5 a.m!!!...

And this brings me to one more thing that is impressive about this country: shedules... India does not stop over nigth... Some companies just follow US tizeones, others just don't stop... There's a mixture of efficiency and chaos in here that just troubles my mind...

2007-03-12T21:17:00.000Z

“come back in one piece and don’t forget to update your blog”… - I’m back to my desk around 8 pm the day before departing to India, Cat has left me a goodbye message along with some project billing notes…

I was tired and the last thing I’d like to do for the rest of the day was to go home and pack… The flight would only be during the afternoon so I ended up leaving most things to be done during the moorning…

As usual, I’m faster packing my suitcase than my photo backpack… I know that whenever I forget something behind I end up discovering new ways of using my equipment, but still I try to avoid these situations and keep the kit as functional as possible… Once again I’m not bringing a tripod… I did not miss It the last time, will I miss it now?...

My mindset in these moments is difficult to describe… I’m usually distant, and not thinking about much… I guess that from the outside I even look sad… All in all, the fact that I’ll be sitting in airplanes for two days, keeps my adrenalin levels to the minimum… In fact having an idea on what’s going to happen in my life for the next two days has been quite uncommon during the last months, so it would probably be better to rest as much as possible and get ready for what’s to come…

Due to flight limitation in this time of the year, my trip will take two days… At night in the first day I’m having Thai soup, a French dish and Italian wine in Frankfurt… It should not feel right from the outside, but feels great…

2007-03-06T12:21:00.000Z

"I've been reading your blog, it's amazing that by sitting next to you every day I can't have the faintest idea regarding what you're really feeling..." - Lisa is surprised that I usually don't show emotions as I do when writing...

Well... What can I say... I still have a long way to go, and I probably will never get there, but one of the biggest ambitions of most poets (image or writing does not matter) is to let others experience reality through their feelings...

Still the ground rules of society and responsibility also bound our ability to show emotions... Being impolite or simple frightening are only two of the risks I could face if I'd let the accumulated rage and stress of these days speak for themselves...

As an alternative I just look outside and figure that everything I'm experiencing is still too small to be important, and that a simple cloud reflecting the warm light of the end of a day is far greater than any problem grown up people can come up with...

Still, even when writing I undergo through different levels of honesty... As Blue Little Guy, I tend to be clear in my messages... But I also have those days when there's just something I want to say without saying and use words as hideouts...

If you usually come here for more than pictures, and where able to get to this paragraph, you'd probably deserve to know the other side of my writings... This is where I usually go whenever thoughts just pop out of my mind without any kind of control... And yes I'm sorry, but I can't do this in English...

2007-02-28T18:42:00.000Z

"it's snowing in Sanabria..." - The teaser in Antonio's announcement for his workshop in an unknown region in the north of Spain shows up in my inbox, in the middle of thousand of emails regarding impossible missions, never ending procedure chains and clients on fire...

Although it's a fact that at the distance of two days it would be impossible to leave everything and just go... These sentences bring my image seeking instincts back to light...

In the last two weekends I was able to reestablish some shooting habits, and to visit some of my usual loved places... I always drive back home asking myself how can I live without it, and how small will my life time be in order to enjoy all of this... And... Aaarghhh!!!!... Today, I'm completely exhausted, looking at the moon rising as the sun disappears on the other side of the horizon... Offices with windows have this problem of showing us what we're loosing...

Well... I'll be traveling soon... that's a good thing...

2007-02-23T18:36:00.000Z

"when are you flying to India?..." - my CEO, meets me at the coffee machine and surprises me with a strange and revealing question...

"well... I still don't know..." - my answer is vague enough not to show that I still don't know what he's talking about... But, if he said so...

Two weeks passed on and in the middle of the never ending and increasing level of stress I now know that I'll probably be traveling again... These last times have been completely devoid of image creation moments, and for some strange reasons I also stopped editing my work... Sometimes I feel like if the strange element that powered my will to succeed as a photographer just ran out...

2007-02-02T16:55:00.000Z

"i'll be going now..." - Inha's wet eyes remind me this is her last day in the office, I'm just back from holydays and as usual the stress of coming back makes me forget what's really important...

Inha is not going to travel along the Pan-American Highway by bike nor hike the Himalayas in search of the perfect light... She is departing for love... This seams even harder than any other trip...

So here goes another brave person who decided to take hold of destiny... This time she's not just somebody I met in a remote location or someone I read about in a magazine, she's one of those real friends that will be hard to let go...

"remember, the world is too small nowadays, we'll be just around the corner..."

2007-01-29T00:57:00.000Z

“there are some issues that we’d better not justify completely”… - I can’t stop reminding a statement from one of my mentors that goes something like this…

As someone that likes to do landscape photography and enjoys the outdoors, I have my own contradictions… I drive a car every day, which pollutes more than needed; I like to drive in off road tracks that should be left to nothing else but silence and I enjoy snowboarding in resorts that where created at the expense of destroying entire ecosystems...

I’m in the French Alps, with all the commodities for arriving to the top of most peaks, but unfortunately for me snowboarding does not mix with photography thus all images will have to be kept in memories… One day, I’ll have to come back to the mountains with the time and means for letting others see what I’ve been gathering all over time…

2006-12-22T20:01:00.000Z

“you should go… live the fantasies!...” – the comment in my last post echoed in my mind through the last week… We are almost on new year’s eve and I tend to get too introspective this time of the year…

From my student days I remember that whenever I’m stuck with a problem for too long, I end up figuring the solution in my dreams… Heck!!!... I don’t remember the last time I dreamt with something…

As time goes by, we tend to force ourselves to live too much into the real side of things, and due to this we train ourselves into posing the correct questions upfront… Things like “how will I pay the bills without a regular job?” end up blocking the sight of all the good things that might come with a radical change…

These last months have been hard, and I have made them worse… I used to fight the world just to have five seconds of photographic quality time, but these last times I’ve been thinking too much and living too little…

Not living too much lately is the evidence I’m carrying through this passage in time… One more year and I’m still too far away… I might never get anywhere, but I should get going anyway…

2006-12-19T01:32:00.001Z

"you should go hide..." - a wise voice from overseas suggests that a cottage somewehere near a lake in northern Ontario would be a bigger help than a jumbo sized cup of coffe...

I wrote and deleted this post serveral times... Every sentence I write sounds like something that I said before... I'm repeating myself when I say I'm tired and really need a trip out of here in order to get back to myself...

There are promisses that 2007 will start wildelly with a series of trips... The perspective sounds too far away to be real, but it's what I have for now...

Sometimes I think to myself I should grow up and get out of these traveling fantasies, but staying at home for too long is like cutting the fuel that makes me run after more and more experiences and story telling immages...

2006-12-11T23:43:00.000Z

“is everything all right?...” – It’s almost mid night and someone asks me why am I still in the office…

“it comes and goes”… I think to myself while spending some time playing around with icons in my desktop after sending the last email… I’m tired and the trip back home looks longer than usual…

I finally get home and serve myself with a microwave heated delicacy along with the rest of the Australian white wine bottle that stayed in the fridge from the day before…

Late in the night, tired and high on alcohol, even the 3’rd class reality show shown on TV seams interesting… I’m not really seeing it, so I'm not to be blamed...

2006-12-04T19:29:00.000Z

"i'm surprised that with so many expensive cameras at the company event, the pictures aren't any good!!!..." - My boss comments his perceived quality of the pictures taken at our annual company event...

Where we talking about cars, this would sound something like: "you have a Ferrari, why can't you drive faster than the rest of the crowd inside a traffic jam?"...

There's an annoying barrier between passionate and normal people in understanding that photography has different meanings rather than the common jargon of "capturing a moment" or worse than that "capturing reality"...

Generically, and risking being to critic, sometimes I feel that for normal people, photography is something you do with a camera... Whereas for someone passionate photography can be about experiencing the dance of nature and ligtht during their best moments, touching the invisible, discovering movement in the world's smallest details, feeling invisible in the middle of a crowd, discover someone's story, breaking limits...

Good equipment and sharp technical skills will probably get you nice pictures... You'll also get really bad ones, this is the way things go... Put passion into the equation and the experience will take you closer to yourself and far away from how good you camera is... Most probably 99,9% of your pictures will still suck... But what the heck! You'll be there for experiencing the world and when you do so you'll find out how 0,1% of your time may become timeless...

2006-11-15T10:07:00.000Z

"you should come here on a better day, today the weather is not good enough for pictures"... - I'm thinking about the amount of times I've heard this, as the flooding in the center region of Portugal prevents me from getting to the place I wanted to explore...

I'm tired after a strange night with a little too much alcohol and less sleep than advised... The blue sky and the warm color of sunset are almost contradictory with the vision of a road disappearing under the water... I recall Antonio saying that there's some kind of light that drives photographers crazy and makes them wander around until they get something that can be matched with it... And here it was, but this time the strength was not there...

I could have driven my car through one meter deep waters in order to pursue some piece of destiny, but respect and some kind of fear kept me back...

Still I drove around, looking for something else to shoot, but... Too many thoughts blinded me: What am I doing here... Those clouds are amazing... Ups... Stay on the road... I can't help admiring those who depart with nothing in mind and just a glimpse of love in the heart...

2006-11-15T10:03:00.000Z

"was Portugal a cake, this would be my favorite slice..." - Antonio starts the initial briefing of his photo workshop in Montesinho Natural Park, one of the most remote locations in inner Portugal...

Tree days of intense rain and shooting went through faster than my ability to absorb all that there was to experience in this place under the weather's endearing influence...

It's a fact: Photography changes our perception of the world. Comfort or the absence of it gains a completely new meaning, rain and cold are no more than opportunities for the creation of images and strange enough they are usually the best when it comes to color details... Being wet is part of the process just as letting our equipment through the same "level of abuse"...

In the end I drive back home for eight hours in the rain... The loneliness of an empty car under heavy rains looks like the ideal environment for meditation... "Coming back to real life is becoming harder each time"…

2006-11-15T09:57:00.000Z

"you migth be able to get there through the river, but it will take a long time..." - I had stoped in a grocery store in the Alvão Natural Park area in northern Portugal and the store keeper is telling me about how to get near one of the parks waterfalls...

Comparing the Portuguese natural park system with those of the US and Canada is like comparing an old Ford Model T with the most recent Mercedes S... Forget the cabin in the entrance of the park where rangers welcome you and give you all the information you need in order to find whatever place you're looking for...

In Portugal you are left with the joy of discovery, sometimes you find the places you’re looking for, sometimes you find something else, often that not you meet interesting people that are glad to help you find what you’re looking for… This approach although romantic and closer to someone that is looking for the subtleties of places off the beaten track is only ruined by the lack of care the Portuguese government shows towards the conservation of natural areas...

Anyway, after walking some kilometers I got near the place I was looking for, but the vantage point from where I wanted to shoot the falls was too difficult to get to without risking falling some hundred meters into a frightening gorge… Where I in the US, I’d have a walking path to get me just there and a guide that would tell me the right time of day and where to place my tripod for the best shot…

“heck I’ll have to come back with more time, friends and climbing equipment!!!...” – The last rays from the sun where striking the earth as the full moon rose above the horizon and I still had some hundred kilometers to drive to my next destination…

2006-11-15T09:54:00.000Z

“after the cities we’ve crossed during the trip I don’t know if I want to visit New York” – We where on our last day before coming back home, looking down from Seattle’s Space Needle when Patricia drew some conclusions regarding North American cities…

There’s a big difference between European and North American cities. In Europe, we are assured that every city builds it’s identity from the course of thousands of years and all the buildings and stories they left behind. In North America, time still did not play its role in defining each city’s identity. I can associate different ideas to each city, but they are more influenced by people and the way they live in each place…

More and more, cities look pretty much the same everywhere I go… They exist near the airports I fly to… But almost disappear from memories when I get immersed into the wilds...

2006-11-15T09:52:00.000Z

“he usually spends nine months a year traveling all over the world and stays at home for tree months mostly to test pick up new equipment”… The attendant at the Art Wolfe gallery in Seattle had just answered my question on the amount of time Art usually spends traveling around...

Art is an extreme case of someone that does what I’d like to do with the added bonus of being successful and well payed. I left his gallery wondering about what would be right sequence of steps to get there… I know I might have the image creating potential, but all the rest and mainly the question on how to be a photographer along with being able to pay the bills and having the power to decide on whatever images I want to create turn a single step into an unbeatable barrier…

On the other side is Nuno, the Portuguese biker traveling along the Pan American Highway (check his website here), doing his destiny just out of the will to be free…

Although in extreme positions Art and Nuno are similar in the sense of disturbing my peace of mind. “What am I doing here?” is a common question as three weeks after coming back from the Rockies reality really hurts my temporary sense of freedom…

2006-10-09T18:33:00.000Z

“We have rooms available for two nights, but after that you have to leave because we’ll be closing for the season….” - The man at the front desk of the St. Mary Lodge kindly informed us regarding our possibilities for staying in the east side of Glacier National Park (US – Montana)…

This did not sound too bad after the having heard from the customs officers at the US border that it would be difficult to find something open in the east part of the park this time of the year… The border would also close in the next day…

The rain did not come back, but the strong winds in the region prove to be worse than rain for the simple purpose of creating images… The trip needed an alternative schedule as we started counting backwards towards the end of the holydays… Does my writing sound depressing?... Well I may be…

2006-10-09T15:06:00.000Z

"Glaciers recede a couple of meters every year, if you come here in 150 years, you’ll be having a boat trip instead of an Ice Explorer trip" - The guide at the Columbia Ice Fields is letting us know about some facts while driving us up the glacier in some kind of bus that seams to have came out of a science fiction movie...

Most of the time we take what we see for granted, but it’s a fact that the world is changing and what we saw during the trip will no longer be there if we ever go back...

I’m back to my daily life now, and as everybody may figure out my posts are coming out a little too late... Everything went too fast during the trip in such a way that each night I would fall asleep without the strength to write at the same rate we where fed with new experiences...

I left every place wishing to come back for more and less... More time, experiences, light, weather, water on waterfalls, snow... Less tourists...

As we travel south from Jasper to Banff there’s a notorious increase in the number of tourists, wanting to have less tourists feels quite contradictory as I’m a tourist myself and I have no more rights to go to those places than all the others... Still I’d like to see Lake Louise without the "Fairmont Chateau" and all the man made infrastructures built around it... Although in a different league, this place left me with the same sensation of a "dominated piece of nature" as the Niagara Falls did...

Amazingly, Yoho National Park is just 25 km west of Lake Louise and although the tourist buses still get there, there’s some sensation of isolation in the air that puts this place in the role of those that I can go back to over and over again...

Heck... What am I going in the office!..

2006-10-09T13:04:00.000Z

“I quit my job, rented my house and will be spending the next 18 months going from Canada’s northern territories to Argentina by bicycle” – We finally found a Portuguese since starting the trip and this one had a big story to tell…

All over the world I met a reduced set of persons with the right proportion of courage and insanity in order to jump into the adventures that most of us dream of…

Sometimes we say that in the next day “we’ll radically change life”… But after a night of sleep we loose courage and there we go again to the same routine all over again…

We saw Nuno going away to continue with his venture with different mind sets… José was probably thinking about how much he would like to do the same, Maria was questioning herself on how would such a person manage to pack all the clothes needed for the trip and still be able to carry them on a bike… I found my comfort level troubled again by facing someone that had enough courage to take the “radical step”…

2006-09-30T05:39:00.000Z

“You should get the yearly park pass” – The park ranger at Jasper National Park welcomes us to the beginning of our journey through the Canadian Rockies… Going into the park center of a Canadian or US national park and paying for the park pass is an almost religious ceremony… My admiration towards the way these countries handle and protect natural areas falls into frustration whenever I’m faced with the reality we have back home…

Our three day stay in Jasper can be described in two words: cold and rainy… As Henrique says: “We have some issues to settle with Jasper”… So there goes another place to our already big list of “come back to places”…

For some time I’m to uncomfortable and worried about the five stitches and the pain in my left foot and the effects they can impose to my pictures that I forget that usually these are the weather conditions that bring me to life… I finally come back to myself on a cold mooring while waiting for the light in front of a glacier… The light never came, but I got back to the usual mind set of feeling that the cold wind and the silence of a mountain bring peace of mind even if we do not get nice looking pictures...

2006-09-30T05:17:00.000Z

“You have two choices: you can suffer and not be able to walk much during your holydays or you can go into surgery now, suffer for one week and still having some quality time afterwards”… - The diagnostic looked clear. Two days before leaving for my trip to the Canadian Rockies I decided to ask another doctor regarding the problem I was having in my left foot… And yes, I opted for the surgery option…

Two days after the surgery I go trough the 14 hour trip that separates Lisbon from Vancouver with five stitches on the foot and a full arsenal of pills, band aids and bistouries… Other than this, everything goes ok: We are able to go through London Heathrow with our camera equipment, no luggage is lost, we have almost no problem with the car rental, the car is super, we can fit everybody’s luggage in, the hotel is ok, but the rain does not stop falling…

We finally welcomed the first sunny day when traveling towards Jasper National Park...

2006-09-11T16:42:00.000Z

“Temperatures are going sub-zero, I need to repack my bag…” – Maria tells me about the last arrangements, we’ve spent the last weeks planning our trip to the Canadian Rockies…

“I’m on the departure lounge again” - Bag that fits BA’s hand baggage policy: check; clothing layers for temperatures ranging from -10 to 30 degrees Celsius: check; Hiking boots: check; Pain killers (for my recent foot problem): check; Plane ticket: check; Passport: check; Film: check; more Film: check; vehicle big enough to put al five of us in: check; 200 GB worth of digital storage: ch… well almost…

The limitations on hand baggage are forcing me into some difficult decisions… For the first time I wont be able to take my trusty 35mm film camera with me… I’m left with the Digital with a dead pixel and dust on the sensor that I’ve given up trying to remove before the trip fearing that it will get worse and the medium format that has not proven completely trusty over time… Still these will have to do the trick…

Other than this, the amount of issues that need to be arranged in the office are increasing day by day and the remaining week seams to last forever… What else is new...

2006-08-23T19:39:00.000Z

“All hand luggage should go into the cargo hold” – The message from British Airways and the UK travel security agency was clear… I was supposed to travel out of India in less than 24 hours, when the Scotland Yard stopped a terrorist attempt… It seamed like this was about to become a trip to remember and I sill had lots of stuff to finish at the office…

My first reaction was to concentrate on the tasks I had to finish… I needed to keep by mind focused on something in order to detract what would be happening in the following hours…

I asked fro some help from the main office but I knew in advance that in times like these we end up having to count only on what the present holds… For some time I stopped writing, because to a certain extent I just could not organize my thoughts in order to do so…

In previous posts I mentioned two very important issues: one was that when traveling there are three very important things that we should always take care of (passport, plane ticket and credit cards) the other was that life keeps pushing our limits and even when we think that we can’t stand things anymore we discover that our capacity to adapt is always there to surprise us…

Well to put a long story short, these where the two realities that I’ve been facing ever since I left India…

As instructed I place all my possessions in my big suitcase (yes, including camera, lenses, laptop, cell phone, glasses, you name it!)… I traveled through London Heathrow under red alert and had to get rid of the two issues of the outdoor photographer magazine I was carrying along with my note book and pen… I finally understood what was to be left with noting else than those I consider the essential items for a trip...

My connecting flight was canceled and I spent several hours without knowing when and if there would be a flight to carry me home… After some hours it seamed I was lucky and there was an almost empty plane taking me home… After landing I waited several hours for my suitcase to arrive, but it didn’t…

Has you might imagine my humor was not in the best shape during the following days… I still do not know what’s worse: the idea to loose my photo equipment or the idea that my next trip is near and I need to make decisions fast in order to keep going…

The suitcase was finally found and delivered to my home after five long days…

During this long process and the long waiting hours at the airport I had time to rethink some of my traveling concepts like: after the tree essentials, a pen is the most important item (you need it to fill the lost baggage claim forms when you get to your destination), and after this, cell phones or any means that enable you to communicate with your family, friends or event your company also come quite handy. In this case, the British government did not give me much chance regarding having any of these items with me, the Airport in Lisbon didn’t help either as they did not have pens to lend and most payphones did not work…

Life goes on and in tree weeks I’ll be flying to Canada on holydays… Guess who am I flying with?... Hint: there are no direct flights from Lisbon to Vancouver and I’ll have to transfer somewhere in Europe…

2006-08-09T19:31:00.000Z

"Did you have dinner sir?" - It’s midnight and I’m arriving to the hotel - "Room service is still on, you can order from your room" - I hate room service as much as I hate eating in hotel rooms (restaurants where made for that purpose), but it seams that today I have no choice...

Today I told someone about the dark side of my trips: sometimes there’s time to enjoy and discover the place, sometimes there’s just work to be done and it seams that every minute until the check-in closing time will be spent pushing every limit beyond what you’d ever think possible...

Extreme situations bring the awareness that limits are always much more far away that what we’d think at the beginning... There’s always room for one more problem, one more exceptional situation and even for surprisingly creative solutions...

People in India are no exception to this rule, from the distance this reality seams to be beyond reason, but here, we get surprised all the time by the strangest events and the creative solutions found to match...

2006-08-08T20:08:00.000Z

"The bar is already closed sir, we can’t serve beer anymore" - It’s almost midnight and I just got back from work, I’m having dinner with the PC in front of me thinking about what to write in this post...

It’s only when we leave home that we find out that most things we take for granted are not so in other parts of the world... Every place got its own way while civilizations evolved randomly over time showing that destiny is an unknown place...

Take body language: where I come from a person shakes the head for saying yes or no... In India someone shaking the head one way or the other means nothing at all... It took some time for me to understand this and for my instincts to adapt in order not to react to those situations... Still it feels strange seeing confidence on the eyes of someone that negatively shakes the head...

I’d like to tell you more about Chennai, but time runs out and I fear I won’t have the chance to go out with the camera... And heart... In every trip to or from the office I’m faced with multiple situations I still did not picture: crowded buses, the live cow parade, the infinite range of eye expressions that seam to did deep into one’s memories... Young, not so young... New, old... Here, there...

2006-08-07T20:32:00.000Z

"Your hotel taxi will be ready to take you to the office by 10 am tomorrow" - An envelope was slipped bellow my room’s door with this message on it... At the beginning I was quite apprehensive with this "all is being taken care for you and you do not need to know details attitude" as I'm used to control every detail like hotel addresses, office addresses, maps, etc...

Now, after getting to three hotels from whom I did not know the address, and after getting to the client's office without even knowing where I am, without needing a single phone call, it's not that I'm used to live with it, but I'm getting the idea that things don't always go wrong...

I also feel that most of my traveler instincts have to be reformulated for India... It may me a mistake, but I'm starting to trust more than what I'd expect to...

Anyway, I still consider I have a highly filtered view of the place... I know the weather in Chennai is unbearably hot and wet, but I have not been exposed to it for more than half an hour... I know the pollution in Bangalore was unbearable, but still I caught a cold from its air conditionings... Basically all the control and organization I'm appreciating come from services that cost more per day than the average citizen will make in a month...

I now think that most of my questions and doubts about this place are not about the place itself, but on how I see and judge the world: the point is not on what I want to know; on the contrary, it's on what I usually don't want to...

2006-08-06T20:43:00.000Z

Have some water sir - I’m, entering the car the hotel sent to pick me up at the Chennai airport... The weather feels like Rio and the water is welcome... One more stage is gone, one more hotel, a good one this time...

The day was intense in Bangalore, my friends started by taking me to wild life sanctuary where we did a photo safari, at the sight of my camera I was invited to sit near the driver... It seamed almost on purpose that most animals showed up on the driver’s side and I could not take their pictures from where I was...

The driver offered to take pictures for me and I handed him the camera... I was using one of my old manual lenses so the driver did not have much success on focusing, but each time he handed the camera back he was smiling as if he had taken the best picture of his life...

In the end of the trip the guide came to me and told me discretely that I should tip the driver... - Now I get it - I thought to myself... I hand him twenty rupees but he does not look happy, I leave the bus and ask my friends if I just did anything wrong, and they tell me I didn’t - it’s just that because you’re from other country everybody expects you to be generous in terms of tipping, a typical Indian would have given him half of what you gave...

Several times I’m reminded that my reality sits years and several dimensions away... In one way it seams that I’m watching a movie, but on the other, my presence seams to have too much effect on people... Yes I’m here... Yes the pollution burns my eyes and they still hurt... Yes I think if I should take pictures or not... Some people tell me they do not want their picture taken, some feel honored to do so... It looks that I’ll carry these memories through my life; they seam to strong to vanish suddenly after my flight out of here...

We skip lunch and head to Bangalore’s botanical garden, the place looks tidy and organized in a way I still had not seen here... People sit on the floor walk or run like they would on the central parks of this world...

Some time later we have a last beer and I head to the airport... The flight gets delayed... We finally depart... And arrive... Once more I did not wait long for the suitcase and the driver as easy to find...

At dinner after asking for a local beer I’m offered a 650 ml bottle - I’ll pretend its water, tells the bad boy in me before the good boy reminds me that I did not have anything for lunch - Anyway I decide to give my stomach a break and for the first time in some days I have non spicy food... I’m offered a glass of wine... I accept... Coffee carries me back to the room...

2006-08-05T18:05:00.000Z

Are you going for program sir? - I’m leaving the hotel heading to the office, and yesterday’s rickshaw man is chasing me again... I tell him that I’m going to work and he promptly answers: It’s Saturday sir!!!... He continues with me until I finally enter the office building...

Stating my guide book: nobody comes to Bangalore for sightseeing, people come here for shopping heating and drinking - basically this is a traffic city, with everything that comes with it...

I’m able to show movement, but I can’t show noise in my images - I think to myself while walking with the camera in hand... I think about the last days... Time flies, but simultaneously it feels like I’ve been out of home for ages... Anyway, half of this trip is over now...

2006-08-05T04:45:00.000Z

Would you like to have something to drink mister? - The flight attendant has just awakened me, I’m flying from Delhi to Bangalore and I’m tired of too much bushtit meetings... At this point my friends: the old captain and the supplies officer are flying back home through Mumbai... My solo trip is about to start...

The plane lands at Bangalore and surprisingly I wait no more than 2 minutes before I get my suitcase... The baggage hall opens directly to the outside of the airport and outside the usual multitude waits with millions of boards with unreadable names... Surprisingly I can easily spot my name in one of those boards... A small wave to the driver lets him know I’m the one he’s looking for...

The weather is quite mild - it almost feels like home - I think to myself... The driver brings the car and we have a nice conversation while heading to the hotel... Everything looks good and I start liking the place... I get to the hotel, and at the reception they tell me that they’ll upgrade me to a deluxe suite, I’m happy again... I get to the room and I think to myself: is this the f... upgrade? The room looks unclean although it’s just old and untreated... I start trying to find my way around, the TV is not working, the safe can’t be opened, I call the reception and I wait two hours before everything is fixed... Still the internet connection is not working properly, I finally go to dinner at mid night and I’m really pissed of...

Back from dinner, I stay up until two am preparing next day’s meetings... I wake next mooring feeling I was hit by a train, I meet my new interlocutors and we spend the whole day discussing technology and prices for the Indian price - India is a price driven country - they say... Yes, I know, I’ve been listening to that since I got here...

In the end of the day I’m exhausted, but I still decide to go out... It’s late and the traffic seams impossible to stand... I go back and forth before I have courage to cross the first street in the middle of intrepid moto-riquexos that do not respect red signs... I’m really feeling out of context, I’m too tired to handle this in a good mood... The horns, the noise and the movement start echoing inside my mind... I insist and walk a little more, and more... It takes some time for me to understand the city map someone handed me at the hotel (once again I’m betrayed by the big scale of Indian cities)... I get to the shopping area... More movement... I try to create some images but I’m definitely not in the mood... I end up giving up and walk back to the hotel...

I end the day having dinner at the restaurant on the last floor looking to the city down bellow... I get to try Indian wine: a white chardonnay and a red merlot - they still need to be worked out, but they’ll get there some day - I think... The food is awesome as always in this country, be it Indian food or some Indian interpretation of international food these people really know how to please my taste... I end with a mix of crème brule and coffee... I’m thinking I really need to sleep when I receive an SMS from the head quarters...

2006-08-03T18:06:00.000Z

We have no laws - said the taxi driver when I asked him about the Indian way of driving... He is from the Punjab, actually the third taxi driver I found coming from this region...

Today we went trough an intrepid trip through some of Delhi’s shopping experiences. From the fancy shopping mall to the spice and fruit market in half an hour, passing through a bunker turned gift shop, with no time and no chance to talk with people...

Here one feels almost frivolous when taking pictures without asking for permission. People just go on with their lives as if I was not there, but every face shows the sharp expression of someone that has a story to tell... And just like there’s no purpose on judging without having my questions answered, there’s no sense in creating senseless images that can’t be completed with words...

2006-08-01T20:14:00.000Z

"India is the second most populous country and one of the economies with the highest growth in the world... Of course the society is highly segmented, but this country is being run by the two top layers (high and medium-high) and these two are bigger than the population of the UK and Australia together..." - Someone was trying to clear some of my doubts about this country. This was in the middle of a business conversation and we did not get to great conclusions... I probably aimed too high, maybe I should have started with simpler questions...

Maybe I should stop with adult and polite questions and let my inner child go ahead with the urge to understand the basis of day by day life... Why does everyone horn?... How do they dare to drive like they do, did nobody explain them that the Portuguese are the worst drivers in the face of the earth?...

2006-07-31T17:27:00.000Z

Hello sir, welcome to the Oberoi Hotel, are you comfortable inside the car? – Said the voice on the other side of the cell-phone the driver had strangely handed to me… I’m still dizzy from the flight and happy to have my entire luggage and that the hotel really sent someone to pick me up at the Airport… Could I wish for more?

I come out of the car at the hotel and I’m saluted by a pleasant young lady treating me by my name… On my way into the hotel, four other persons will salute me that same way…

Later on I’ll have sushi for lunch, I’ll go for a city tour and at night I’m having an Italian dinner with the finest risotto, a fresh salad, and a glass of red wine…

In case you did not notice it before I’m in India!!!... By the time I received the call in the car my mind was already bubbling with more questions than those I think I‘ll ever get answers for…

Why… How… What are these persons doing sitting on the ground at 7am???... Why do buses have bars over the windows???… When did time stop in this part of the world???... Even so there seams to be more order and understanding in this strange flavor of chaos than in other realities I face in my daily life…

Still… At dinner I paid more for a single glass of wine than for a four hour drive with a taxi driver… I do not know if I’ll ever find the answers, I know I can’t change reality as I see it, but the conflict still arrests my thoughts…

Today I chose not to show pictures I still have no explanation for… Of course, there are nice monuments in Delhi, colorful Shari’s and all the pictures you might have imagined but still I see to much barriers arresting this people as I’m also too much looking at all this though a looking glass…

2006-07-26T18:32:00.000Z

Ok, we can confirm flights - Someone said… The agenda and the itinerary have been checked so many times that I’m sure I’ll forget something on my way there…

As the world spins down bellow my notion of what’s essential is reduced to three simple items: Plane Ticket, Passport and Credit Card… All the rest, including photo equipment, can be bought, downloaded or replaced with more or less effort…

Obviously there are compromises and money imposes its limits, but I wouldn’t have the peace of mind to even get a disposable camera and go through the game of dealing with the limit of 36 photos in one week after finding out I had to deal with all the paperwork that comes with loosing a passport…

2006-07-25T16:56:00.000Z

"How are you? - someone asked after not being with me for more than 7 years - I know you travel a lot and take lots of pictures"...

I thought twice before answering that I could be better. It's a strange feeling that in certain perspectives our lives just couldn't be better; but when we live them the definitions just don't come close to the real experience...

We tend to envy other people without wondering the price they pay for being whatever they are... I love traveling and creating images, but in my case that comes with a dose of uncertainty that sometimes just seams unbearable: where will I be next week, will I have an hotel when I get there, when and how I'll be back are matters that no longer show in my priority list... Still, I can't stop this and live another life...

In some strange way I find my balance in the middle of this chaos of not knowing or to controlling whatever comes tomorrow...

2006-07-21T19:09:00.000Z

Someone asked me what I was doing in the office at 7 pm on a Friday... I'm on the departure lounge - I said to myself - while answering politely that I was helping someone on the other side of the world...

I'm entering the emptiness state of mind that usually precedes great trips... I'm tired and just stopped caring about what I'm leaving behind, tomorrow I might need more strength, so there's no point on thinking about whatever I should think about...