I've been into deviantart since 2002. Ever since, I've learned so much from so many talented people I can barely fit that knowledge inside my brain. Damn, I didn't even have a camera back in the days; I bought a (not so cheap back then) Sony DSC-P8, started shooting and shooting to reach the conclusion that photography is 70% photographer and 30% camera - which led me to buy my beloved Fujifilm S5000 from one of my fellow portuguese deviants, improving more and seeing further.

Years went on, and, let's face it, deviantart is a game, a game of recognition - which never came. Putting the fact that half of the front page's deviations are plain whoring / uninteresting crap, which is perfectly normal in these "exponentially-driven fame games", it started to bug me even more that as my photos got better (did they actually?) the distance between recognition was getting bigger and bigger.

The passion for photography got bigger - mainly animal action and macros - and the limitations of having a camera which didn't allow me to use different lenses was restraining my expectations towards photography and capturing emotions.

The quest for my personal improvement went on. In a very awkward and somewhat funny scene I managed to buy a Canon 400D - my current camera. What started being a child's play and a purely entertaining vision exercise started getting the shape of a very serious hobby - perhaps almost as important as music in my life.

I got better. The ability to go fully manual and having the immense quality of Canon's lenses opened a wide new range of possibilities - even with the standard 18-55mm and the (poor) f3.5-5.6. I felt like I could turn anything into a piece of art, it felt like "finally!", like if at last I could translate what my mind-eye communication wanted. It felt great.

Six years have gone by, and the lack of recognition in my work is still a standard. I thought about it for a couple of days and have come to a decision.

My girlfriend (baby I love you) is crazy and offered me the too-expensive-for-young-working-pockets sigma 105mm f2.8 DG this week. And a change of seasons will start from now on. I decided to stop being so self-absorbed into deviantart's way and just let things go as they please here - even if I wanted them not to, who am I? I'm going to start taking my flickr account seriously. Props to fixe for that - he convinced me to do it.

If by any odd chance you met my gallery here at dA you've seen I divided it into three phases. Well, phase four starts now.