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If you are in the forest, you will hear the bird, but will not see it.
You are in the forest but your mind knows the forest,
whatever happens, a tree that falls, anything there,
your eyes and mind are already trained and prepared.
You open the window and some toucans
fly over your back yard
and eventually land straight ahead.
A friend of mine, who is the state park director,
was lost with a guide during two hours and a half in the forest.
I work a lot in the Atlantic forest at São Sebastião
region in the north of São Paulo State seaside.
I have been doing this job in that region during approximately twelve years.
I take pictures of wildlife, plant’s life and…
macro a little bit of macro photography.
Not a lot but I also do macro photography.
Therefore, I look at every single detail;
my work goes from the big landscapes with its ancient trees
to a small insect under these trees.
The Atlantic forest is one of the least preserved
Nowadays, Brazil has only seven percent of its original forest,
but on the north coast of São Paulo State where I live, we can still find it.
Walking ten minutes away from the road,
you are in the deep forest, beautiful and preserved.
I try to register with my pictures all the beauty and emotion I see in the Atlantic forest.
It is a very humid region and a deep forest, almost no light.
There are times that at three o’clock in the afternoon
it seems night with some light spots.
There, we experience a big technical difficulty of low light, I mean,
the picture’s dark part compared to the high light, there is a great difference between both areas,
much more than in a bright area where we do not have this big contrast of shadows,
these are some of the technical difficulties we face in that region.
There are other difficulties such as the fear of getting lost in the forest.
Another day, a friend of mine, who is the state park director,
was lost with a guide during two hours and a half in the forest.
Then, you have to be careful with this,
you take for example a mirror in case you get lost,
if a helicopter comes for a rescue it will be able to find you in the forest.
I also use a whistle because the voice loses power in the forest.
Even in a thirty meters distance it is hard to hear you in the forest,
using the whistle you will have a chance to be heard.
These are some of the tricks to work in the forest.
There are poisonous animals.
There are thorns; in short, there are a number of different situations.
But when you get the picture when you find an image…
Sometimes, there are two different scenarios:
you are there to look for a specific kind of picture
and then all of a sudden a different one shows up in front of you, it is random.
The other day, I took one of the pictures that touched me a lot up to now
I found two “caninana” (kind of Brazilian snake) snakes
It is a type of non poisonous snake but it is big, almost three meters long.
These snakes cross breeding in the nature is a very rare scene to be seen.
I heard from locals living there for more than 60 years
saying they have never seen that.
Their cross breeding is like a ballet.
The front and the back of the snake are all wrapped up from the middle to its end and in the front the snake performs a kind of a ballet.
And I was sitting around two meters away from them and was all excited taking pictures.
Suddenly, I was frightened because they were separated and probably would not like to be watched so closely.
Not mentioning the empathy with the animals, the way to observe and wait in a distance, the kind of bird that accepts you….
The “sanhaços" are much more skittish than the “sairinhas” (kind of Brazilian bird),
which are smaller and you can almost come close to them.
The “sanhaços” are very skittish.
A “tié sangue” (type of Brazilian bird) which is a wonderful bird,
beautiful like a flower that flies, that red bird.
You can see the “tié sangue” from three or four hundred meters distance,
so it has to be very skittish.
It is a very visible bird.
This butterfly is not the kind of picture I use to take:
my pictures are very much about focus and definition.
The animal completely clear and defined with a good pose and a good light.
In this picture I was more concerned with the form and the light, the beauty, the charm.
Suddenly you see this blue form moving, flying around the space, the forest, the ground, the green field…
The sea is a fascination for most people.
The sea is also my muse, as it was for the Brazilian composer Dorival Caimmy.
We have a bit of fear and uncertainty as well
You cannot say no I'm not afraid of anything.
When I was a kid I used to swim on the waves,
I never went surfing, just played like all boys do at the Guaruja beach
Big waves there.
We used to cross the surf rolling waves on the flooding tide days and go for that wave!
If we were stocked with/by it, it would be terrible.
Nowadays I am more careful, right!
I stay in the coastal taking pictures and there is a very dangerous place
The sea coast is a place where you have to be careful!
It is very easy to be caught by a big wave
Six years ago, a photographer died in Boiçucanga beach at the coastal.
But like I said the sea has this fascination,
Fernando Pessoa has a sentence that I think is all about this fascination, he says:
“God gave the sea all the danger and the depths. But he mirrored the sky there.”
The wave picture was taken in a very windy day, with a strong flooding tide.
And I climbed the coastal and when arriving there I saw an incredible sunset light.
Actually, it was only five minutes of an unbelievable light.
It was a very cloudy day and
all of a sudden a sunset light showed up...
Suddenly it was a GOAL!
When you are able to capture that moment, you say,
this is a sensation you feel when you deal with random things.
is not like something that is static and you can control it.
You put your light, you stop, and you think about the picture…No !
But if the situation is out of your control,
when you are able to capture it, wow!
It is the same sensation of making a goal
I made the goal! It is so good!!
We have been visiting the north coast of São Paulo since the 70’s
and were always delighted by the nature’s preservation there.
That exuberant nature where the forest meets the sea.
Where the fishermen culture was still well preserved.
The people there went fishing for eating.
We traveled there on the sand by motorcycle
At that time, the Volkswagen Brasilia was the only car able to reach there.
The difference about living there is that somehow you adapt yourself, get used to the place.
You become a local and when walking in the forest and look at it,
the way you do that is much more accurate than someone who is getting there or just visiting.
You glance around and notice a little animal, an insect.
You are able to look both ways, one is the macro in a square meter distance
when you sweep the area, do a quick eye scan of everything
and the same happens for the large areas.
You leave your home and look at that mountain back there, oops
There is a point there that you had not seen: it is a white falcon, which is very far.
It is in the middle of the jungle, but you have that forest in your mind.
Whatever happens, a tree that fell ... your eye is already trained.
The Vitória Island, where I have been photographing twice
I knew there four years before, when it had just received electricity.
And those people living in a paradise, but in another world, people without electricity,
40 people from 4 or 5 families that do not know how they got there.
They say that their grandparents have lived on the island but do not know how they got there.
There is a generator, but at 8 o'clock at night it is off!
And the TV is there.
They all work in traditional fishing.
There is currently an environmental education among them.
Previously, people threw the garbage in front of and in the vicinities of their own homes.
Now they have learned how to collect the trash, caring for a number of hygiene issues.
They are visited by dentists.
But these people were living on another planet until 20 years ago!
english version: Rosely Sventkauskas subtitles: Jania Girardelli