Cultural Attempt | 27082011

Last week I was invited by my friend Graça Barreto to make part of a brilliant initiative called: "Cultural Attempt | Um dia = Um livro. 27 de Agosto. Um sábado "a gosto"."

The main point was during last saturday we were challenged to leave a book in a park bench, cafeteria, bus station, seaside...

With a special dedication note it'd be even better! =)

This is how I did it! =D

[First: thinking about which book I was going to leave for my fellow man I've chosen as if it'd be me to find it and what I'd like to find...]

Then I made a draft of the dedication note =)

Adding it to the book first page...

[Transcription:

"Hello,

This is a cultural attempt!

Act normally because if you cooperate, no one has to be uncultured.

If you’d like to see your general knowledge again and continue to express yourself in the right way or even better, it is important you take this book with you and next time you may join this act.

If in any moment you choose to contact authorities or anyone else, be sure you tell them everything about this!

The power of this message will be destructed if you let it happen!

Thanks’!" =D

Choosing the spot...

Playing with time and with the people that seem to guess that something was about to happen =)

Hitting the ground running =D

It seems that we never noticed what normally is almost in front of our very own eyes =)

Hope you like it!

PF

Thanks' to: Graça Barreto for the invitation and Orlando Santos who was crazy enough to help me on this specially when everything was made a few meters from the place he lives =)

Contemplative Photography | Color Assignment

A few days ago while surfing through the piles of photography books Amazon has to offer I found out one that kept my attention.

It was not another “how to” kind of book but truly a “what if” kind of speech that asks the right questions, makes you think about what you are doing and at the end suggests exercises in order to put everything together.

After the first 56 pages of theory I was faced with my first assignment: color! The challenge was about going out (not looking for places we often think of being beautiful, “photogenic” nor ideal for this kind of task) and look at color out of context. In the author's words: “See the redness of red and the blueness of blue without superimposing anything on them at all” (...) “Look for bold, vivid colors”.

So I went through a street nearby the place I live...

http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=R.+do+Dr.+Eduardo+Santos+Silva,+Porto,+Portugal&daddr=41.17381,-8.5868239+to:41.1727555,-8.5874349+to:Pra%C3%A7a+do+Marqu%C3%AAs+de+Pombal+168,+4000+Oporto,+Portugal+(Marqu%C3%AAs+de+Pombal)&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sll=41.16948,-8.595343&sspn=0.031853,0.073128&geocode=FcpSdAIdMPZ8_ym1Z2VdbGQkDTHMayeV6SWJyQ%3BFTJDdAIdufl8_ykZqXzvbmQkDTGBRwe0vesAEw%3BFRM_dAIdVvd8_ynlotcib2QkDTFB50m0vesAEw%3BFekRdAIdObJ8_yH1j-4DSKYi1w&mra=dpe&mrsp=2&sz=14&via=1,2&dirflg=w&z=14

and walked nearly 3 km looking for flashes of color.

I ended up with this... (just a few...)

Ups! I forgot I'm not allowed to photograph mother nature =D

I hope you'll like it!

PF

IMF [ FMI ]

“The city is deserted,

And someone wrote your name everywhere:”

[“Ouvi dizer” | Ornatos Violeta]

This could be the very beginning of this article =)

A few days ago I was amazed by the way Oporto welcomed the IMF [FMI in Portuguese] intervention, then I found out more of this all over the downtown.

I just felt like photographing them and bring it all back to you.

Along with the obvious irony and sense of humor came an intrusive reflection about the public opinion’s generalized idea of “the enemy”.

Politics aside, allow me to be honest, the fact is: we were in serious trouble and we needed help. After years and years getting money from the EU we are not at the development level we were supposed to be [economic and social trouble] and some public institutions were on the verge of failing to pay their bills and employee’s wages [financial trouble].

Imagine you have spent all your savings, your parents’ allowance and the creditors are about to knock on your door. You have no money so you ask your older brother for a loan. Isn´t it fair enough that with your spending track record he might want to be sure you are not going the same way to assuring you’re back on track spending each Euro thinking about tomorrow’s liabilities?

It’s not that I enjoy to loose almost half of my Christmas complement to my wage or worse, that I might feel indifferent to daily stories of people loosing their jobs because consequent cuts on public spending. Far away from that. I just believe the first step to our recovery lies on assuming our part on how did we come to this.

As far as I’m concerned I do believe in Portugal, I do believe in the portuguese people, their guts and resilience capability. Let's face this together...

“Whether you prevail or fail,

endure or die,

depends more on what you do to yourself

than on what the world does to you.”

Jim Collins

=)

PF