Hi, Hola, Olá! I am Rafael

Photo Mode: Ghost of Tsushima (PlayStation 5)

The year is 1274. Samurai warriors are the legendary defenders of Japan—until the fearsome Mongol Empire invades the island of Tsushima, wreaking havoc and conquering the local population. As one of the last surviving samurai, you rise from the ashes to fight back. But honorable tactics won’t lead you to victory. You must move beyond your samurai traditions to forge a new way of fighting—the way of the Ghost—as you wage an unconventional war for the freedom of Japan. Video games and photography are two of my biggest passions. With the increase of graphical quality on the Playstation 5 and PC, games started adding new features like Photo Mode, and I don’t need to say that I am already in love with it. Photo Mode allows to pause the game and set camera controls like aperture, focal length, luminance, blur, game logo, film grain, aspect ratio, bokeh balls, tone curve,...

Seattle in HDR

On the first week of August, I got a work trip to Seattle, and of course, I brought my X-Pro3 with me. Recently, I have been exploring a software called Aurora HDR, which has the ability of generating amazing HDRs from a single RAW, so I don’t need to make bracketed exposures anymore, unless I am using a JPEG file. Aurora HDR comes with some built-in presets that come super handy as a starting point. When editing, I usually load a preset that does not modify that much on the photo, and do my fine tune from there. When I see HDRs around, usually people exagerate on the effect, transforming the image into something kinda bizarre and ugly. My approach to HDRs is to usually preserve what my eyeballs were seeing at the moment, with an extra of some spices, but that’s why I like doing them at the very...

PhotoPills - Plan it, shoot it!

Did you like the picture above? That was only possible because I planned the shot using a mobile App called PhotoPills (and Aurora HDR, since it is an HDR to preserve the clouds composing the scene [it added some cromatic aberration though])! The composition, made possible by this app, is so exciting that even made me code a new functonality for this website, the new EXIF overlays! Make sure to move your mouse over the images on this post to see the EXIF information, including GPS coordinates, use your mouse wheel, or trackpad scrolling to zoom in/out on the minimap, located on the lower left side, and you will see exactly where I was when taking the photo! Let me know on my Instagram if you liked that new feature! PhotoPills is a photography planning app that help me plan my photos ahead of time, so I’m always at the...

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