On the corner of Rossio with Rua do Ouro, March 10th 2010

When I found that Maria was preparing her first CD, I offered to do some pictures of her. I asked a common friend if he would let us use his studio, and he immediately agreed. We spent a Sunday afternoon on the studio trying several ideas, and this was one of the images that surfaced from that session, but it’s not going to be used on the CD.
In this picture, Maria is directly beneath a softbox placed high, and tilted at a 45 degree angle. A white reflector is being held by “Mr. Veneno” to fill in the shadows.
This was my first “commercial” assignment, and the first time I photographed on a studio. It was a hot moist Sunday in Lisbon, and I was in a lot of stress for trying to do a portrait of someone (and Maria was only slightly less than me) and I forgot to check the camera settings. Maybe because of this, every single exposure was made at ISO 400… I almost collapsed that night when I downloaded the pictures to my computer, but they’re good enough for a CD cover.
My thanks to Maria for posing for me, and to Ricardo and Margarida for letting us use their studio

Last week I visited with some friends a abandoned building in Lisbon, to explore the photographic possibilities of the place (old, decadent, industrial). There, I asked Joost if he would help me with my first assignment for the Strobist Boot Camp II.

Joost is a freelance photographer that has walked half the world (actually, half of Europe, Asia and Africa) shooting for magazines, newspapers and for himself, and he’s much better qualified than me to run the controls of a DSLR. Even so, he kindly agreed to place himself on front of the lens, and with the help of two strobes, a small umbrella, and a Lumiquest Big Bounce, I managed to get my first real portrait:

My thanks for Joost, and Sonia, my assistant for the shoot