Sunday 6 May 2018

Although Not Real,

in the true sense of the word,


 I find these photographs stunning,

 they are the work of self-taught photographer Xavier Portela, who became frustrated by how static and two-dimensional his images appeared,

 to explore this vibrancy and atmosphere Portela began to manipulate the colors in his images,

 “When you are taking photographs on the streets you have way more than just a frame, you have variables like temperature, noise, people, smell,” Portela said in an interview, 

  “You have tons of details that make our senses and brain record a specific ‘scene’ of that moment. When you got home and you look at your photographs on screen, you only have a frame in two dimensions. It’s frustrating how much information you just lost… I wanted my shots to look like as if they came straight out of a manga. Vibrant and electric.”

and you do not need a drone to achieve this effect,

 at street level the photographs are, for me as attractive,

 Portela’s series Glow is an ongoing archive of urban images from his trips to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, New York City, and more, each photograph is edited with a wash of neon-inspired pink, blue, and purple lights, 

although previous series have included photography taken on the street, more recently he has begun to produce aerial views of the sparkling cities at the beginning of this post, You can see more images from the Belgo-Portuguese photographer and filmmaker on Instagram and Behance

here is a show-reel of his work, I wish he would make a tutorial of how he makes the almost magical effects to his 'normal' photographs, for me they are stunning.


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