By José Manuel Santos – Pictury Photo Tours I have spent most of my life behind a camera. Looking. Waiting. Observing. Photography has taught me to notice the small things: a gesture, a fleeting expression, a shaft of light appearing for just a few seconds before disappearing again. It has also taught me patience, because the best photographs rarely happen when we want them to. They happen when we are ready for them. A few weeks ago, something unusual happened. I was in Vila Nova de Gaia, near the iconic Luís I Bridge, a place I know well. Over the years, I have walked those streets countless times, sometimes guiding guests on photography tours, sometimes simply enjoying the atmosphere of one of the most beautiful viewpoints in Portugal. It was an ordinary day. Or so I thought. At some point, a young photographer approached me and handed me a card. On it was a photograph he had just taken of me. I looked at the image. There I was, camera in hand, completely unaware that I had become the subject of someone else's photograph. The irony made me smile. As photographers, we spend our lives looking at the world through a lens. We frame, compose, anticipate and capture. We are usually the observers. Rarely do we stop to think about what it feels like to be observed. For a brief moment, the camera had turned around. I wasn't the photographer anymore. I was the photograph. What struck me most was not the quality of the image, although I liked it. It was the perspective. The young photographer had seen something worth photographing in a moment that I would probably have forgotten within minutes. It made me wonder how many moments we overlook in our own lives simply because we are
By José Manuel Santos – Pictury Photo Tours I have spent most of my life behind a camera. Looking. Waiting. Observing. Photography has taught me to notice the small things: a gesture, a fleeting expression, a shaft of light appearing for just a few seconds before disappearing again. It has also taught me patience, because
