When I first set off on my analog adventure, I started by focusing on my immediate surroundings. Many of the photographs I took during those first months were of places I already knew, and for the most part, I simply repeated shots I had taken before with other cameras and systems. That said, the experience was far from a mere replica of the past, because both the analog process and black-and-white format are so different from digital color photography, I felt it was something entirely new from the very beginning.
What began as excitement over using a new format and enjoying new gear gradually became a growing desire to discover new places, even within my closest surroundings. It helped me uncover countless spots with great potential that I had never noticed before. Photography evolved into a form of exploration, a push to go a little further, to see what lay beyond, and the distances I was willing to travel for the sake of a photo kept growing.
These days, I can easily spend an entire day in the car, driving for hours, stopping in the most unexpected places, maybe drawn in by a herd of sheep, a ruined house, a small railway station, or simply a landscape I feel compelled to capture. And it’s an incredible feeling, that sense of expansion, of widening horizons, of seeing what lies beyond. It might sound a bit cliché to some, but for a homebody introvert like me, it was something completely new.
Still, that doesn’t diminish the value of the beauty closest to me, the corners of my own region, the places where I’ve put down roots and which continue to surprise me. I always enjoy going back to them, and no matter how far I explore or how much my horizons expand, they’ll always hold a special place in my photography. Mount Caxado is, without a doubt, one of those places, somewhere I always look forward to returning to, and that never fails to amaze me.
