The Internet has gone crazy for photographer Vitor Schietti’s recent photo series, Impermanent Sculptures. And it’s easy to see why. Last week we featured his amazing long-exposure photography and because everyone was blown away with his work (and because he’s become our new favourite photographer), we had to ask him a few questions.
In this exclusive interview, Schietti describes just how he came up with the Impermanent Sculptures concept, what he loves to photograph the most, and what he’s going to spoil us with next.
When did you know you wanted to be a full-time photographer?
My relation to photography started when I was around 10 and I earned a Polaroid for Christmas. I loved it, but the pack of sensitive foils had only 10 ‘frames’ and it was so expensive that it was really a happening to take a photo. But I think I was hooked. When I turned 14 I earned a proper film camera, a Canon 500V and did a basic course — things started to make sense, but yet as a hobby.
In 2006, at the age of 20, I went to study French in Montreal for 2 months and ended up staying 4 months in that beautiful city. First thing I got when I arrived in Canada was a Rebel XT, an 8 megapixel DSLR. That was really the turning point, since I could take thousands of pictures at virtually no cost. My learning curve went straight up, especially doing street photography and already experimenting with long exposure, which soon became my favorite technique. I returned from Montreal still believing I wanted to become a renowned Art Director in Advertising. But less then one year after that, while working as a junior art director in a local agency I had the opportunity to work as a photo assistant to an Advertising Photographer I knew little about, but looked like a good professional. His name is Daniel Madsen, and we’re friends (and studio neighbours) to this day. I decided I would be an assistant for a while, maybe an year, and come back as a better Art Director.
Turns out I found a photography studio much more interesting then an advertising agency, even though we mainly worked for advertising agencies. I loved thinking no how to produce a picture, how to direct the models, to think of the light and especially the post-production. I soon became very good at manipulating images on Photoshop, and it helped me pave my way in the beginning of my career as an advertising photographer.
So, long story short, I decided to become a full-time photographer somewhere during the three years I worked as an assistant, from 2007 to 2010. My solo adventure started after that, but the decision was made.
What do you love photographing the most?
I usually get very productive while travelling, especially on trips abroad Brazil. Being in a new environment makes me very sensitive to everything: colors, people, buildings, culture… so I’d say I love to photograph during trips, even if it’s a working trip, as I had the chance to take a few through Brazil in the last couple of years.
I’ve gradually been more interested in photographing with long exposure, combining a still camera with a model that stands in frame for half the exposure time and then leaves it (usually I was the model for those, or friends, if I had any with me), or camera movements to blur the scenario or the subject in specific ways.
The last time I travelled abroad, to Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala, was very productive in these two kinds of technique. You can see the result of these experimentations in the series Present and Transitory. Long Exposure photography is what I love photographing most, as a technique, and the subject is constantly changing, but it usually has something to do with observing impermanence of things, and expressing it with beauty and delicacy.
Your ‘Impermanent Sculptures’ photo series is incredible. Can you tell us how you came up with this concept?
As I’ve mentioned, long exposure photography is part of my relation to the medium since my early days. I tried some conventional light painting before, but it didn’t seem too promising, since so many people were already doing it, and some did wonderful works, so I felt I didn’t have much new to bring to the scenario. What I most liked doing in light painting was illuminating the model instead of leaving traces of light, like the Argentinian photographer Arturio Aguiar.
I kind of forgot about light painting for a while, and turned my attention to long exposure during daylight, using ND filters. As I grew comfortable with the technique I decided I wanted to teach it to other people, since I started having people ask if I would give a course on photography and I didn’t have much interest in teaching the basic stuff most courses teach. So I came up with the course ‘Photographing the Unconscious’, which starts by discussing Jung and Freud psychoanalysis, eastern philosophies, meditation and then moves onto long exposure, light painting and multiple exposure photography.
I spent 6 months researching for the course, and I learned a lot in this process. I came across brilliant photographers that inspired me not only to share their works and dissect their techniques with my students, but to attempt similar stuff myself. At the first edition of the course, which I held in May this year, I focused more on the long exposure techniques, since I was more familiar with it, but I showed a lot of great artists in light painting, such as Annu Huhtamo, David Johnson, Lapp-pro team, Tokihiro Sato, Marcelo Maragni, the Lightmark couple, Martin Kimbell and Eric Stellar… Michael Wesely was also a great inspiration, but that’s towards long exposure, not light painting.
But I’m digressing, back to Impermanent Sculptures. So, to explore further knowledge on light painting for the second edition of the course, which I just recently held in September, I bought some fireworks and started playing with them, looking for a suitable balance between their power and the fading sunlight of twilight. I prefer integrating them with the landscape rather than having the light painting take over the scene. And I didn’t want just to draw at random — I had symbols and concepts in my mind I’d like to express. So I started with the Triangle, the trinity, and also tried some spirals, circles, waves, the eight infinity… always trying to make these patterns integrate with the environment. Impermanent Sculptures was born. And then it came to me the idea of illuminating trees with the fireworks I had been using.
The movie ‘The Fountain‘, by Darren Aronfsky played some influence there, subconsciously, since I hadn’t watched the movie in ages. The first image produced turned out to be the most successful one, and I knew I had found something great there. I produced some 4 or 5 other ‘trees of life’ in the span of one week, which is a lot considering I wasn’t on holidays and had commissioned jobs going on. I could count with Pedro Lacerda on those productions, my dedicated assistant and promising photographer, and also had the occasional help of the friend and enthusiast, Nelson Cordeiro, an outstanding illustrator, by the way (http://corderoilustra.com/).
The concept is about creating drawings or sculptures that never really existed for the human eye. The only witness for the work created is the camera, as its sensor registers the movements of the light painter as if one draws with different tools on a zen garden. Impermanent Sculptures remind us of how transitory everything is, and how beauty may be present anywhere. Sometimes this beauty might be invisible for the naked eye. You see these pictures and you wonder how it was done, and then, when you understand the process behind it, you realize that image never really existed, yet it was all done in sight, for real, with minimal digital interference. That is something to think about…
What was involved for this shoot?
The process is relatively simple, although it took a lot of work and lots of trials and errors to achieve this result. The time of the day is vital. I need twilight, so I only have some 30 to 50 minutes to produce the picture. I could also work during sunrise, but it’s hard to demand my assistant to get up at 4 am.
I have an ND filter in front of the lenses and I set it to specific aperture and ISO that would bring the brightness of the fireworks down to meet the ambient light, which I bring to an appropriate exposure through the shutter speed (the only factor that doesn’t influence on the artificial light source). Depending on the relation between these two lights (ambient and artificial) I’ll use longer or shorter exposures. So they may vary between 5 and 50 seconds, roughly. When using shorter exposures I have to take more pictures, but I isolate better the artificial light from the environment. I prefer working with longer exposures, though, and then I may have the image I want in one single shot, or maybe the combination of two.
After I covered the area I needed, and that involves keeping a spatial memory, along with checking on the camera which areas need more light, I’m pretty much done. I might also fire a speedlight flash on the subject (tree) or scenario once it’s gone dark. I get the pictures open on Lightroom, make some color and contrast adjustments and export them to Photoshop. Once there I set them on top of each other and set the layers to the blend mode Lighten, since I only want the bright parts of each picture to influence one another. There may be some masks involved during this process. That’s pretty much it. There’s a making-of video available HERE.
Do you photograph something every day?
Not every day, but as much as I can. Working with photography full-time means you have to run other things apart from the act of photographing. Lately it has been answering lots of emails about this series.
What are you working on next that you can share with us?
I have a project that I’ve been developing since 2008. It’s called From the Unreal to the Real. It’s on dreams and it doesn’t involve long exposure, but lots of photo manipulation. There’s one central character, Osiris, that is represented through several dreams. It’s a photographic series portraying Osiris’ self-discovery journey. I’ve had 11 pictures produced so far, each one taking an enormous amount of planning and post-production. One of them took me around 6 months experimenting with manipulation and a 3-D model, until I was satisfied.
I’m thinking about the best way to publish them, but haven’t got a clear plan so far. Maybe I’ll send it to Lost at E Minor at first hand and we’ll see where it goes from there <img src="http://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/1f609.png" alt="