Spotlight Went Outside

Last September I took advantage of a gathering to celebrate 20 years of friendship with my university friends and I brought Spotlight outside of the comfort and control of my home. I set up a portable studio and worked almost in an assembly-line fashion, industrializing the process so I could photograph as many friends as possible. My good friend Fábio was there documenting the whole weekend, which means I now have proper behind-the-scenes moments of me at work.

Shooting outdoors brought its own set of challenges. The first one was something I hadn’t expected at all: just how different everyone’s body shapes would be, and how much that would affect framing. Normally I photograph one person over a long session. A few test shots, some small talk, and once the ice breaks the setup stays mostly fixed. But this time people were arriving in quick succession, and I had to readjust constantly to keep the composition consistent.

The other big challenge was time. Ideally, I would’ve spent longer with each person, but having everyone together in one place was too good an opportunity to let slip. So I worked quickly, trying to ease people’s discomfort and push just enough to capture one or two portraits we could both feel good about. Each person was a different experience — some easier, some more hesitant — and the very last one even required a bit of chasing. With a mix of honesty and irony, Ângela told me why she’d been avoiding the camera at all costs. She’s a photographer herself — a professional one — unlike me (just a serious hobbyist). But she completely freezes in front of a lens. She chose the right profession to stay behind one all the time. 😅

Now, onto the editing. Just like during the shoot, I had another surprise waiting for me. Shooting outdoors meant I set my camera to practically kill the available light and rely entirely on my snooted flash. But the flash didn’t always fire. And when it didn’t, a bit of natural light still slipped in, just enough to illuminate the face while the black backdrop kept swallowing most of the photons.

For the laypeople out there: cameras can shoot a file format called RAW. It’s essentially the pure data the camera records, which means it’s far more flexible and forgiving than a compressed JPEG. You can recover mistakes, nudge exposures, and pull detail out of places you thought were lost.

So I tried salvaging the misfires in post-processing and voilà. The first natural-light Spotlight portraits were born. And let me tell you: they won me over instantly. I love the bleached-out, grainy, almost film-like quality they gained. For quite a few subjects, these accidental exposures ended up becoming the final selections.

What these little surprises always show me is that Spotlight keeps evolving whether I intend it to or not. I always go in with one basic premise, the technical aspect of how I need to set things up. But every time the shoot quietly shifts into its own direction.

The quick sessions gave rise to interruptions, being friends crashing into the frame, or couples taking the chance for a joint shoot too. Someone’s shyness or playfulness giving rise to using a prop, the flash misfires, none of it was planned, but all of it taught me something about how this work wants to manifest itself.

While strangers can appreciate the results of this technical setup — the ability to focus on the subtle facial expressions of each subject — for me, Spotlight is becoming more and more about the experience itself.