Behind the camera
(and the mic).
For 25 years now I've been photographing more or less anything that holds still long enough — and plenty that doesn't. It's less a late discovery than a return: something I loved from early on, before career and everything else crowded it out for a while, and have been making room for again. What started as a way of paying closer attention has turned into a catalogue of over 6,000 images and, more recently, a habit of filming and recording the same moments too. I like the way the three add up: a photograph for what a moment looked like, a film for what it moved like, and a recording for what it actually sounded like.
That last part isn't an accident. I've spent most of my working life around sound — building acoustic engineering tools for JOCAVI on the side from 2007, and running technology for a company moving audio and video across the London music industry, before joining JOCAVI full-time in 2017 to keep thinking about how a room actually sounds. None of it was meant as training for a camera, but it shows up in how I work: I listen for a room before I frame it, and the mix gets as much care afterwards as the colour.
The look I keep coming back to isn't the desaturated, grey-blue "cinematic" palette that's everywhere right now — I want richer colour, real contrast, light that comes from somewhere in particular rather than flat daylight. I'd rather keep a bit of grit and imperfection in an image than polish it smooth. Mostly I shoot close and long, but I'll go wide the moment scale or the room itself is part of the story.
I don't direct much. I'd rather wait for a fado singer to land mid-verse, a room to go quiet before an encore, or a conversation to forget the camera is there, than ask anyone to perform for me. That's true whether it's an ongoing live-session series like Mais do que Amor, é Fado, an acoustic Garden Sessions film, a full concert recording, or a 43-video campaign for a client — the job is still just paying attention and being ready.
Even inside all of that, portraits are what pull at me most. A musician holding an instrument isn't automatically interesting to me — the person behind the instrument is. I'm less interested in proving someone was there than in keeping something of what it actually felt like to be in the room with them.
Based in the Lisbon area, and glad to travel for the right project. If you want the fuller picture, the work has the highlights, and my Flickr and YouTube have everything else.
The Gear (Every Photographer Will Recognize)
I already admitted the equipment isn't the point. Doesn't stop any of us — here's what actually leaves the house:
- More camera bodies and lenses than any sane person needs — the math never changes: whatever you own, you'll always need more
- A drawer of old vintage Soviet and Leica glass — Helios 44-2, Takumar, Mir — kept purposefully because swirly bokeh will always beat sharp and modern glass
- A pocket-sized gimbal camera that quietly outperforms the serious-looking one, and every videographer already knows it
- Enough spare batteries and memory cards to still run out at the worst possible moment
- Enough microphones and multitrack recorders to remember that nobody notices good sound — only bad
- A "one more take" reflex that has outlasted several deadlines
Underneath all of it is a simpler, harder question I still haven't answered: what makes an image recognisably mine.
Twenty-five years, the long way round.
Twenty-five years ago I picked up a camera the way most people do — with no plan for what it would become. It wasn't a career move, and it wasn't really even a decision. It was just a way of paying attention that stuck, on and off, through a working life that took me somewhere else entirely: building acoustic panels and running audio and video technology for people who make music for a living.
For a long stretch, photography lived at the edges — a habit more than a practice. Coming back to it properly has meant admitting a few honest things about myself. I love equipment, probably more than is useful — a new camera, a new lens, a new way to light a room — and I've had to learn that none of it is the point. The question I keep circling is simpler and harder than any of that: what makes an image recognisably mine? Not the camera. Not a look borrowed from whatever's fashionable this year. Something underneath all of it, that I'm still working out — and probably always will be.
What I'm actually after is a photograph, a film or a recording that makes someone feel something real — not proof that a person or a night existed, but something of what it actually felt like to be there. That's true whether I'm photographing a fado singer landing mid-verse or a handful of friends playing in a garden until everyone's lost track of time. I'm not trying to document. I'm trying to translate.
Where this is going, over the next few years, is toward doing more of this properly — directing, shooting and recording work that means something, not squeezed into evenings and weekends around everything else. More documentary work. Commissioned projects worth the name. Concert films built the way I actually want to build them. Eventually, something longer. None of that happens because I own better cameras. It happens by doing the work, watching what comes out of it, and getting a little sharper each time about the difference between what I did on purpose and what I got lucky on.
If there's a constant in all of it, it's that I don't stay satisfied for long. Finishing something usually just produces the next question. I'd rather it stayed that way than the alternative.
Notes on process
Minimal direction
I'd rather catch a real moment than pose one — expect a light touch, and a lot of watching and waiting for the right frame.
Sound is part of the frame
I record and mix audio myself, so it's built into the shoot from the start rather than patched on afterwards.
One person, start to finish
Shooting, editing, colour and mix are all handled in-house — from the first phone call to the final delivery.
Light with a direction
Flat daylight rarely makes the cut. I look for a clear source and let contrast do some of the work.
Texture over polish
A little grit and imperfection usually beats a surface polished completely smooth.
Let's make something good.
Tell me a bit about your project — I usually reply within a couple of days.