Claudia Curici Photography
Exploring my passion for photography
Seattle. The city of flowers
I’m back from Seattle and I had a hard time deciding what photos to share first. In my view, Seattle is about flowers, coffee, good food, seafood, views, street life. Since this was a family short holiday (a weekend actually) I didn’t have much time to take pictures, but I have a few I love that I’d like to share. With the views we were not too lucky, due to the smoke created by the largest wildfires in the state’s history. Food was impressive, coffee was excellent, the street life vibrant, and the flowers… everywhere. This was one of the things I didn’t know about Seattle, they love flowers… I lived on four continents and visited many countries, but I’ve never seen so many people buying flowers anywhere else. Below are two photos taken at the famous Waterfront Farmers Market. 🙂
Out of Chicago. Flamingo
Before I head off to another big city in the US, I thought I’d share some of the last photos I have from Chicago. This is Flamingo, a steel sculpture by American artist Alexander Calder. These are some of the angles I could capture with my Fuji x100S.
Finding your style. Up for discussion.
I admire photographers who have developed a distinct style, maybe because it is something that for me seems hard to achieve. Since I started this photography journey, I’ve been exploring anything and everything, and I take pleasure in photographing any kind of subject. My final frames show rather the mood I am in than a distinct style. I am asking and I’ll focus on this for the next leg of my journey: How to achieve consistency? How to find your own style? And is this really necessary to become a successful photographer (and by successful I don’t mean a commercial photographer, but someone who becomes an inspiration for others)?
Achieving consistency and finding your style meet somewhere, but I guess consistency is just a step on the way to finding your style. What do you think? I’d love to hear your advice, thoughts. I’ll start exploring this myself and will share my thoughts as I go.
Just an illustration of two different ways of approaching a subject (The Traveling Man, stainless steel sculpture in Deep Ellum by Brad Oldham, Dallas).
Let’s talk about food (photography)
I am a self-taught photographer (with another job on the side), so everything I know about photography was learnt step by step, tried and tested in time. In the past almost two years, I have learned (with much pleasure) many ins and outs of photography, but there are two things I admit I need help with: food photography and using a flash. The idea of flash (or speed light), I don’t like it; and I know for sure I will avoid it forever, as long as there is sun in the sky (and a window). But food photography, I am fascinated by it (I also love to eat and appreciate good food). There is this guy I follow on Instagram, Matt Armendariz… give him a pile of left overs and dirty dishes and he will take a nice picture of it. So that’s the kind of food photographer I want to be :D. I am also aware he works with cooks and stylists, but I’ve been following him for long enough to understand he doesn’t necessarily need them to be a good photographer.
So, anyway, today I had these raspberries in the fridge and I thought I’d try to be creative. It didn’t work until I got really close to eliminate the context (it is also true I don’t have any nice props and the light is not great in my apartment. I tried also the speed light but I didn’t really like the result. The first two photos (actually the same frame, processed in two slightly different ways) are taken by the window, on a black chair, while the sun was out of the clouds, with a white reflector, no flash (Nikkor 40mm, f/3.3, 1/125 sec, ISO 100). I don’t really remember how the third one happened, but the settings are: f/5.0, 1/100 sec, ISO 100.
Trees of Texas – Layers and textures
I like the multiple layers and contrasts in this frame: the light and shadow, the roughness of the tree trunks and the pebbles vs the smoothness of the water, rooted on soil vs flooded, the twin trunks. I was wondering why I didn’t use a large aperture to take this pic, but I remember this is exactly what caught my eye, the layers, so I wanted to have as much of it in focus.
Trees of Texas
From yesterday’s walk at Lake Grapevine. Trees are my favorite things to photograph, in any season.
Little street moment
More from San Antonio’s Riverwalk. Do I have to explain why I love this photos? 🙂
I tended to want to convert them in black and white, but the color of the dress is what makes the atmosphere and the contrast, in my opinion.
Textures, black & white
I have to be honest, I haven’t been taken that many photos lately and I struggled with my creativity and motivation. But I guess this is something that happens to everyone? This is a photo I took in San Antonio last weekend, a photo I ignored until I came across Ansel Adams’ pictures of plants. Sometimes I doubt my choice of subjects (or objects) but there is always something that gets me back on track. I really like how the camera captured the texture of these leaves. Focus could be better, but plants are everywhere, waiting to be photographed 🙂
I’m curious, how do you deal with your creative rut?
San Antonio: Riverwalk Watercolors
Last weekend I visited the famous riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas and this is one of the few photos I came back with. I was so fascinated by the reflections of the colorful umbrellas in the river that I spent about 30 minutes staring at it (and taking pictures). The wind added some awesome movement and this is the result (turned upside down). The frame is something new, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time and today I finally tried it. It is definitely much easier to see the potential of a photo for print.
Walls of Deep Ellum
Something I missed when living in Dubai, street art is plenty in Dallas. I can’t wait for lower temperatures to hit the streets. These photos were taken with my Fuji x100S. Although I prefer shooting manually, sometimes I like to use the Auto ISO setting on this camera. When I’m outside I usually turn it off, but this time I forgot and I ended up with pictures taken in full sun with very high ISO. Something I’ll remember next time, for sure. 
Claudia Curici Photography 