Fall and the light

Fall is here, this week we had the first severe whip of the season after some beautiful days around 21C. My daughter came back home with a bunch of fallen leaves and she is pretty serious about painting them: “Before you paint them – I asked her – wouldn’t you like to take some photos of it?” She happily accepted and helped me setting up a transparent tray with a flash underneath it. To get a more even spread of the light, I put a Lumiquest Softbox III and on top of the flash a white piece of paper on top of the diffuser.

Nothing especially fancy of complicated, a very basic backlit studio set, just what I needed. I took the D90 with the Tokina 100mm f2.8 A-TX Macro and a small ladder and started playing with the light power on my CLS control. My daughter eventually lost interest in what I was doing and anyway had to do her homework, and the little old kid started shooting. The result is here, a “group” shot and a lone leaf, enough before we had a blackout and had to light up some candles to fix dinner….

Retiro Park, Madrid

For somedody who live sin Madrid and loves photography paying a visit to this beautiful park is almot a duty, or at least it should be. During my stay in this city, now since 1995 I have been to the Retiro several time, yen never with my camera. I fixed this obscene issue last week, a short visit during abeautiful fall's afternoon: my D90, the Tokina 100 f.28, the Nikkor 18-70 f3.5-4.5 and the tripod, here to follow the result of the visit

Backlit iamegs are my favourite, and if there's a human being in the shot much better

Fall is quite a romantic or depressing season, is just a matter of taste. For me is the "Antipasto" of the winter, which I hate... The lone man walking on the park adds something to the shot

Sidelight, almost backlit I should say. Warm and beautiful

Light and water, a combination that always attracts me

The "classic" Retiro shot, the pond and the monument to Alfonso the XII

Lari, small town in Tuscany

A scooter parked in front of the door, a beautiful house, three men talking outside the homemade pasta local shop and the street paved with carved stones. A typical image of Italy, of those you can especially find in a small and charming town in Tuscany, as there are many. In this case we are in Lari, not far from Pisa, up on the hills. We were visiting the castle, which may not entirely deserves it, but the town was very neat indeed

I realize that when I'm wondering somewhere in the world with camera in hand, I almost instinctively attempt to freeze situations that represent the lifestyle of the place I'm visiting, rather than the monuments and historical pieces. I get more and more attracted into the details, and a detail for me is a window, a door or a lamp that stick out form a corner.
Tuscany for this kind of photography is full of high quality opportunity. A true paradise for those who love this art

Colours and smiles

There are a few things, among many, dramatically affecting a fishing portrait: colors, or rather the contrast between them and the attitude of the fisherman. That man that holds the fish and that despite not being the main subject is very important just because is a bulky thing in the middle of the frame.

Pictures in marine environments, from boat or from shore, have a backgound that more than often is blue. A blue of various shades, sometimes dull and sometimes with an intensity almost cobalt. In both cases, having in front a subject whose overall color contrasts with the background, will result in a more powerful and successful image. Especially in the tropics, we find fish that have bright colors that help a lot. I think about the Cuberas and the Snappers, Groupers and of course the Dorado.

If we stop to think for a second about the species we have just mentioned they all have in common fewf colors: red and yellow or a reddish brown. Now if you look at the image of the color spectrum you can see that exactly on the other side of the blues are the yellows, oranges and reds, which means that these colors are opposites. This is exactly what we want; these are the tones that will create the necessary contrast in order to achieve a photo that will pop up, with major depth and strong personality.

Thus not always we have colorful fish in our hands hence, I humbly believe that it is the fisherman who has to add a drop of brightness to the image providing clothing that stands out. An orange, yellow or red shirt will surely strengthen the shot even with a gray sky behind, and obviously even more with a strong deep blue one that we can even improve with the use of a polarizer.

The attitude of the fisherman is another important element and I say this knowing well that I often forget about it either when I make the photos or the few times that I am the subject. A fisherman with a serious face simply doesn’t work. It seems that the guy instead of having fun is upset with something, and conveys a sense that is absolutely antithetical to what the reader expects. Something does not fit the image, and does not work. I can understand that you can be tired after a struggling tug-of-war with a strong fish, or with strong seas for that matter, once again we're having fun, and somehow it has to show!

Finally we have the casual fisherman who enjoys it a lot and you can see in the photo. It’s brightening. It gives off positive energy, he’s happy and it shows and his attitude is highly contagious. This man will have a much better chance of ending up in a two spread in a magazine or in the front cover, than any other moody or grumpy guy that may have taken a bigger fish.
Small details matter!

Jig colors? Do you really care?

Lately, I have developed an idea about colours, shape and size of the jigs that is pretty close to the one a Neanderthal could have thought of. Yet, again and again, there are examples that keep me thinking that maybe, we should stop for a second and weight our established theories. Should we eventually put in rewind and get rid of some truths that maybe, are not so truthful?

During my latest trip to the Tropics, the Andamans to be precise, everybody spent a lot of time jigging. Different places, different species, depths and tides. Every one worked with his favourite jig, included myself, and I picked a few. The reason for every lure I choose was different, yet most of them were simple, rusted, or paintless pieces of lead with zero appeal whatsoever. My main goal was to test, once again, what would make the difference and what would not.

I thought about my crappy jigs as soulless particles of metal, puppets maybe, and that I was their Mangiafuoco, the puppeteer. Without me, they had no chance to come back to life and draw the attention of any kind of predator. I worked hard for the money, fishing was quite good on day one to three but after that the tide changed and the action slowed down big time. So it was the moment to show all the tricks and turn a dead situation into some lively action.

Well, it was a tough deal, those animals don’t like very much any kind of slow retrieve (apart from GTs), and hence keeping a faster pace kind of tired me down. Thus, my crippled jigs, with no eyes, no paint and no sex appeal made some serious damage, even when the other guys, with good looking stuff would see no action.

I sell lures, have an internet shop and stock many different kind of lures with several different colours. None of them catch MORE fish, not a single one is miraculous yet there’s a jig that will catch more fish that any other: is the one that we will drop most of the time and that suits our style better.