When Portugal plays the whole country stops.
It's like if a giant red sign was lit and everything would be there in suspense, waiting for a verdict that would lead us to the streets or confine us to an infinite sadness.
If the whole Portugal stops, we don't!
And how good it was to find Lisbon practically empty, to serve, quietly, as a stage and backdrop to this story of two that in no time will be lived by three.
How many memories do we already keep from this family? I don't know.
Few, in proportion to how loved they already are to us. Family of themselves and of ourselves too, as if this Vicente was not "our" Vicente!
I know that the sudden passing of all the good times is a misplaced and unparalleled injustice.
An headache, a flu.. last forever! An afternoon at the beach, moments in the company of the best people we could have around... a blink of an eye!
And we deal pretty bad with injustice! We feel like breaking the glass of the clock and halt, once and for all, the clock hands and only wind it at the pace that we wanted to.
The first days of life of a baby are a stage of charm and tenderness, but also of recognition and adaptation.
It always passes quickly, too quickly and, often, when, a few weeks after the first shoot, we deliver the photos, we listen to exclaimed reactions about how grown, how changed, how different he/she was.
How many times have we heard"I don't even remember her so little"?
Those are the best memories we can deliver. Memories that are now part of the parents but, with all the probability, will also be part of these tiny lives we photographed.
All stories have a B side, or at least two versions, depending on who tells.
And the other side is, perhaps many times, the best side.
If in a version of this story there is detail and a lot of light, on the other side there is symmetry, balance and a job that is often done in the shade, undeservedly.
Sergio, besides Terra, this our side A, also wears the shirt of a project although the same, so different. The Invisible Gentleman, a wonderful and amazing side B!
Invisible Gentleman is photography, but much more than architectural photography. There is rigor, there is symmetry, balance within each picture, every shot, but there is much more, there is love for what is done.
Some days we feel like we woke up in the wrong side of the world.
In these days, when we feel like doing a little or nothing we settle ourselves by the memory of the others. The days when we tell stories, when we laugh and play, exchange experiences... and keep everything in a memory card that is so tiny, in front of the great stories we want to tell.
Tomás was born on the King's day against any prospect to come as a christmas gift. He was born on the day he wanted, even like a little king, and as for us, on the right day.
Early last year we received an offer we couldn't refuse.
What started with the idea of shooting a set of children's parties quickly became the party and the excitement that would be to shoot for a book.
Says the popular saying that life is this: "plant a tree, have a child and write a book." Although we can not say that we wrote it, literally, but if we think that it is through the images that we write and tell our stories, then we may have some credits in this part of writing a book, right?
This story already has some time, but now, more than ever, it really makes sense to share it.
On this day we met a family of three but with stars out of sight, a friendly family that so well welcomed us in the party of little Helena that later on we would met again, this time in Paris, for a delicious family shoot.
After Helena's christening there have been many small stories giving body to this larger one, there have been Paris and Paris agains, but also Rome, Berlin... there have been a family shoot, but the best was yet to come.
Here we forget the good maxim that "the secret is the soul of business."
The soul of the business are, truly, the people behind it, representing it like a second skin and taking it off of the ground.
Behind every brand we recognize the effort and dedication of someone who we don't always know exactly who it is and how it will be, afterall our Terra also gives us a good shirt to wear, and it is with great affection that we welcome new brands here in our space to help them showing up with pictures where they recognize themselves and where the quality of their work stands out.
That's how we met Sofia, the (cute) face behind the brand Homes in Colour.
Live.
Each day as if it were the last one.
I take a deep breath and I still bring clinging to the body the emotions of this day. It's like when we greet someone with a stronger perfume and that good smell follow us throughout the day.
There is no secret about how much I have affection for the amazing people I have the good fortune to meet, shoot and many of my brides and grooms (yes, forever my brides and grooms) are now friends from whom I keep the best memories and whith whom, I'm sure, many more chapters I will have to live, together. People who crossed my way and that I will do everything to make them stay. Stories of families that I saw starting and slowly are bearing the most delicious fruits with tiny bodies and delicate feet to whom I make sure I borrow my lap.
At the speed that time goes by we almost launched this story in the commemoration of Tomás first day of school.
We met Diana and Diogo in their home, open doors and arms to receive us.
We were so well welcomed that we felt at home and when we got out, to photograph at Gulbenkian gardens, it had a taste of a walk with friends.
We are always going from north to south, perhaps a little more to south.
We spent hours locked in the car with our eyes lost in the anticipation of the landscape and the head lost wandering from one idea to another, a thousand things to do and new projects that are taking shape.
Some people say that the journey matters more than the destination, but not everything that is said is exactly true.
This trip took us to the south, further south, and the destination was infinitely more exciting than each meter of the road, made with the nerves on the edge, antecipating one more wedding proposal happening before our eyes.
We had our shoot scheduled for the day before, but life and the weather decided that a flood would fell over Lisbon, with serious flooding, a little everywhere.
Alfama would be the stage of this story, its streets and corners, tight urban mesh of steep staircases and the river always peeking.
In Tammara and Brad plans, they would drive to Sintra after this short stay in Lisbon. And the next day, with a pause in the bad weather, in the rain and the dark clouds, we left our old studio, in Sintra, and walked to Volta do Duche where we set out to shoot until the rain soaked us up to the bones .
Lisbon, its seven hills, the disorderly houses laid in the sun, its light, the colors, the smells.
We are eternal lovers of our city, knowing that so many times we were there but so much still remains to be seen, places to discover, cobbled streets to walk and stumble.
We have already been lost at many cities, but yet don't know New York, although many characters of our stories bring this city in the eyes and in the heart.
Sonia and Jean live in the city that never sleeps, the city that for many is still only a dream and diffuse images is to them home and life.
But Lisbon was the stage they chose to give ground to this history.
Sintra.
A thousand and one nooks. A landscape that fills the view and the chest with fresh air. A light that never disappoints although everything is haze.
The place where we are from and where it's always so good to come back. But even better when we are in the best company.
Between jokes and many blunders we hardly noticed the drag of the clock hands on the clock display.
We sang with open lungs to the air of the mountain songs that we didn't even know the letter. We have recalled fairies and gnomes again and again until we missed our voices but not the cold night air falling.
Christenings are, increasingly, a constant in our days as storytellers. And increasingly we feel that they get lost in the bustle of so many other chapters of other stories, of happy families and passionate couples.
Today we remember a christening of an unique family where love is magical, like the moments they gave us and that made us stuck our finger to the shutter button, our eyes to beautiful images and heart to unrepeatable moments.
There is a place that is ours, where we are integers. A place that is soul and home where we recognize ourselves. A place that can be a beach or a field, the sunset or the moonlight, a place that is who you are when you are together even at no place at all.
From one place to another the tangles of life as open roads where by chance, not more than by chance, we found a new way to love.
Friends are the family we choose when in no way we could ever choose our family. A kind of blessing that validates the way, a new place where we are always who we are.
Because we are always us within us but we are much more who we are when we are among ours.
Madalena.
Tiny, sweet, fragile.
Melting us with a her tiny feet, tiny hands, smiles and expressions... and even with one or another unexpected "surprise".
She slept almost the entire shoot, even in an different environment from the one where she already feels like home even without knowing the meaning of home.
We know that an environmental change is not always accepted with the lightness of a nap and maybe so, despite how much we love to do these sessions in the studio, is in the comfort of home that we have been registering, increasingly, these first days of life.
I knew since the first minute I met Julia that I wanted to photograph her. Maybe it's her inexhaustible energy, or perhaps her agile brazenness with which she leads life forward with the force of a typhoon or even, perhaps, the unheeding ingenuity of giving kisses and hugs freely, that captivates.
I envy her healthily in wishing to be like so: give a brave shake to problems like whom pushes the hair back of the shoulder or shakes the sand out from the shoes, recharging the energy in every step of the way and go straight ahead without the destination being decisive on purpose.
We delay stories because there are stories that can't find a place in words to be told.
Almost like when we go to an amazing place but it seems that photos can not show how amazing the place is, because a part of that amazing place lives in us.
Part of this story lives, still, within us. And we turn around words, the ones we know and the ones the dictionary reminds us and they all look tiny and fragile, far from how amazing this session was.
