A long time ago (2007) I was studying photography. And for some awesome coincidence of life, our friend Ray was editing a magazine (Sem Fronteiras). He needed custom photography and I needed motivation and challenge.
It was a great combination! I am forever grateful to the chance. I did enjoy it a lot!
By that time, I had literally no experience: no technical knowledge and the neuron(s) that translated emotion and thought process into an image were atrophied by lack of use. But that chance was exactly what I needed to form my view of a freelancer photograph: the dos and the don’ts. The story that “when you like photography you snap anything” it’s a fairytale. Don’t believe it!
One thing I loved to do was the cover! I did one of the covers by mistake and another two we did together, thinking about the process. One of them you see on this post.
In fact, for practical reasons, the picture that went to the cover was a vertical one, by this one is my favorite. I love the color and the undulation of the background, the body position and the expression on the “out-of-focus” eyes. But more than that, I loved the way the picture matched with the cover's theme, talking about the tendency that some people has to say that Amazonia is not Brazilian territory.
We did an Uncle Sam surrounded by the green of the Brazilian flag.
The creation process was what I most enjoyed: Ray had the idea of doing a picture but we also did not want the “model” to be recognizable because, in the end, the picture was not about someone specific but about an idea. He played the model, coming to my house on a black suite with a butterfly tie and a high hat. I hang a green cloth and tethered the camera so we could see the results right away and correct the position of the hand and the body position, which is the focal point on this picture.
Ray is now traveling around. You can follow his adventures at his blog on http://www.semfronteiras.eu/
On the real cover, we lost a bit of color. I believe it happened due to the ICC profile embedded on the picture: I do all my workflow on Adobe RGB and so I have exported the picture with the profile but apparently it got lost between the printer and me. Lesson learned: always convert your pictures to sRGB unless you know for sure that people printing your photograph is color profile aware. In Netherlands, there are a couple of laboratories that correctly handle the ICC profile.
And just because I am walking my path through my passion, tomorrow I will post something I did not like to do :)
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