Intro

If you have a sharp eye, you might have noticed that I've finally settled on a title for this newsletter. It's an expression that resonated with me deeply while listening to a podcast interview with Richard Sharum. It feels perfectly aligned with what photography does for me, and it captures the very purpose of this newsletter practice too.

Working on

1. Goodbye Mailchimp, Hello Buttondown.

A new newsletter client.

I took the liberty of my migrating you all here. Please feel free to unsubscribe if that’s a thing you would like to do. I didn’t not read the terms and conditions. Soon enough I will delete everything on mailchimp's side.

Pro's:

• Interface is more modern.

• Functionalities are simpler.

• Control of newsletter design is greater, albeit code base. But that's not an issue for me.

• Links are cleaner on the free tier.

• I am able to set 0 trackers on my newsletters.

Con's:

• Asks for paid tiers at a lower subscriber amount. 100 as opposed to 250. I am still not there, but it's a thing ot have in mind.

• Style customizations are only available in paid tiers.

  • But as a plus you get a way cleaner and simpler newsletter.

2. Developing and Scanning BW film from 2024

I started to gather all my gear and things and the feeling that I developed was that I should get rid of all my film gear and just go digital, use whatever I have for as long as I exactly need it, like my scanning rig to scan the film and then just slowly but steady start to get rid of things.

It didn't take me longer than just taking my first roll out and seeing the images to feel the joy, the tingling sensations inside and to feel the certainty that I want to keep doing this. I know that the times of burning through rolls are over.

While I focus on organizing my archive, I’ll primarily shift toward digital photography. For specific assignments or ideas where my film cameras are better suited, especially given how specialized some of them are, I’ll continue to use film. Otherwise, for now, I’ll stick mostly to digital.

So far I managed to develop and digitize all the medium format film, and the 35mm patiently awaits.

3. Street photography 2025

Recently I considered entering some street photography competitions, so I dove into my 2025 archive. I flagged what felt worthy, filtered the list, and eventually settled on a selection of what resonated with me the most.

Street photography is a genre I still love deeply, yet I haven't shared much of it lately. I decided to refine this set into a batch ready for social media and public streams. This helped me start putting work out there again and regain the satisfaction of publishing.

Looking at the collection, I noticed a pattern where I have significantly increased my use of color in my street photography. Not sure what that tells, but it's a fact.

You can find this on my instagram, blusky, flickr and fotoapp.

Book corner

Once again, there’s no book for this edition.

Inspiration

Exhibitions

Reflections on owning stuff

A small exert from a paragraph in a friends newsletter really resonated with me and made me think about writing this whole section here.

…but mostly I like owning things. I love looking at a shelf and seeing objects I enjoy, which never happens when I look at my phone.

— Thom @ https://supergranular.substack.com/

Every time I look at my shelves, I am looking at things that I own, and that I can possibly enjoy. But most of the time I end up looking at my phone, and nothing there belongs to me. Neither products nor experiences are my own, it’s a marketing window directly into my brain's dopamine system, that has become so fallible, so gullible.

I had written this paragraph before taking a break from Instagram. What has happened since then is that I have way more energy to do things at home. They are not all related to photography, but one thing is for sure, I am doing more things with my own stuff again and I'm very happy for that.

On this topic still. The other day I was at the GP and there was a moment where the doctor left to call another doctor to have a second opinion. I'm not sure how much time passed because I didn't look at that, but what I know is that I kept reaching to my pocket for my phone. Again and again I was trying to be present, trying to be calm, trying to look around, but that knee jerk reaction of reaching for my phone was just so natural, so evident to be the next step to fill my mind with content and dopamine hits. I kept putting my phone back until I had to say to myself "Nuno, STOP!!" I felt ashamed, like I was a junkie - In a way, I am. I am very happy that I noticed that and honestly there's not much on my phone nowadays that I can look at. I've really reduced the amount of social media accounts and applications that I have on it. So I'm improving, and I hope you can hear from me more often in this space because of that.

Quote

Photography is not a sport, it has no rules!

— Bill Brandt

Reads

My quest for recovering my time offline, focus and energy continues. And in engagement of this pursuit I came across this article.

I want to live my life like a poem...

— Gideon Heugh

Joys

Seeing friends selecting my photos for their profile pictures :)

P.S.

It took me a while to write this newsletter. I wish I had taken the time to look at the book I wanted to, but once again, I find myself talking about time. Simply put: time has won. Or rather, the lack of it has. This chronic shortage I've felt over the last few months, perhaps years, this constant tug on my attention has finally stretched me to the breaking point. I have hit a major low.

Usually, it is at this point in life that I reflect deeply and take action to bounce back. So, in a counterintuitive twist, I am following the advice of a friend with whom I was sharing my struggles wholeheartedly: "What if I didn't have this desire to do photography?"

The pressure I put on myself, the gap between wanting to create and actually doing it, is causing more harm than good. For now, I want to let go of that need to force myself. I'm talking mainly about desk time and editing. I'll happily go out and create more backlog instead. 🥲

That too will count for these newsletters, so if I already stopped the monthly ones, the next will likely take even longer, but I need a break, and I need to work on myself.