Born and raised in the north of Portugal. Since an early age, I was pretty lucky to wander across hometown with a skateboard in one hand and Ice Tea on the other. Later with family we ventured a lot into the woods. Mountains, rivers, lakes and sea. Wild animals were legends that I knew nothing about, yet.
When I finally had to decide my future and what would I study, a tall, gorgeous and enigmatic mountain peak was on the back of my mind. I can't tell you whether If I wanted to climb it and have the perspective from the above, to hug it and have all nature for myself or if I just wanted to stay still and marvel at paradise.
So I decided to follow natural sciences and ended up studying Biology-Geology in university. Best years of my life with so many different conversations and stimulus that led me to philosophize a lot. Without Ice Tea though. Eventually I discovered how big cameras were and that you have to have a strong grip for it, and maybe you'll get the chance of going places. And so, in the last year of college I decided to invest in one camera and learn as much as I could. Completely unaware at what would be the subject, but in every click that mountain peak would reflect back. Like a fire in the attic. Ippon for sensei Nuno for the inspiration!
2 years after graduating and I land on my first job in a worldwide nature paradise: Azores. Ironically, the island that we were based was Pico (which means peak in portuguese), which happens to be the tallest in Portugal: 2351m. With a 44% inclination, that seemed a nice down the road to skate, not to climb.
I was still following mountains but the job was at sea, in the middle of the atlantic ridge. For 5 months I was living on tuna fishing boats to patrol the fisheries and to prevent any intentional mortality of cetaceans. I had no experience whatsoever at sea but it turned out pretty well. Besides, when I applied for the job, I was clueless that I would be working closely with whales. It was absolutely the best gift ever. In my head, these were animals that lived out there, far from reach in the open ocean, away from any human interaction and only pirates had catch a glympse on them. The ocean cast a spell on me and I guess that it still does today.
So this is where I am today, trying to use my camera and what I learnt with my education and work experiences. The desire to travel, and being an exotic species and count the number of countries that I have visited is slowly being replaced by the need of helping, taking care of the world and making it a better place. Still want to capture beauty and take cool photos, but I would rather tell interesting and powerful stories about the correlation between nature, wildlife and humans and possibly influence someone's decision to celebrate the cornucopia of life!