UCO Valley Mendoza Argentina

Going down the UCO Valley

I was very excited when my friend and excellent photographer Gustavo Puigdengolas asked me to go out with him to do some shooting in the UCO Valley, I couldn't wait!!!


We left early morning to catch the sunrise, it was amazing, as you can see looking at the following images, the resolution is not the best, all these images can also be viewed on my website under Mendoza Argentina Tab

 
 It was amazing to be with another photographer sharing the same passion for photography.  When we stop to capture the sunrise the weather was perfect and cold, felt like -2 to -5C, the valley is about 7C colder than the city of Mendoza,  not bad for an early start, the temperature went up to + 13C mid morning. I was very fortunate to have this opportunity and be with someone that knew everything about the region, Gustavo knew where and went to stop, no lost of time scooting the place.

I did 3 panoramas, average of 40 images each, the top images represent the road going down the valley, it's an amazing view, such a beautiful country.

Panorama done with 40 images

 We stopped all the way down the valley.

On the road going down we saw a gaucho, Gustavo stopped the car jumped out and asked him if it was ok for us to take some photos of him, he agreed!!!

 Walnut plantation

The other 2 panoramas were done in the valley at Tupungato Winelands, it's an amazing resort with a golf, hotel, restaurant, and it's surrounded by the Andes.

In our way to Winelands

 Winelands

My friend Gustavo capturing the grand landscape

It was an amazing day, thanks to my friend Gustavo,

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Grunge!!!

Grunge is very trendy and very interesting, it's the in thing in photography right now,  what exactly is grunge photography?

I don't think I have the exact answer, and I don't think that there is an exact answer as grunge like other kind of digital imagery is extremely creative and depends on the artist vision.

Normally these images or creations take a lot of editing, many hours in Photoshop, a lot of frustration and unsuccessful work that end up in the garbage bin, that's part of my experience and like many of other digital art, patience and practice is required.

The grunge effect can be described as dirty, gloomy, dark, old, eerie, using textures and mute color.

 The urban graffiti-like design is often done using one, two, three or more images.

The following images were done using textures, vectors, one to 5 images and hours of Photoshop editing.

City Woman with Tatiana Vladimirovna, done with 2 images, a lot of texture and editing

Miror, only one image using texture, brushes, and vectors.

Help me with Jessy Cortes, using 2 images, textures, vectors, brushes.

Dream with Christina Patterson, using 5 images, textures, brushes.

Bullet Man, using 3 images, texture and brushes.

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Session Boudoir, Lightroom Mute Color Preset, Model Jessy Cortes

When shooting Crazy For Love with my friend Jessy, we tried different outfits, props, lenses and lighting effects, during that set up time, I did few test shots, "a boudoir mini session", it was a great way to warm up.

I decided to process all of the images in Photoshop to do the basic corrections, after what I imported all of them into Lightroom, and applied Jade preset from Scott Wyden Delightful series, this preset added a hint of nostalgia and lowered the saturation,  it's a perfect fit for boudoir, the Delightful series cost only $5.00.

 I like to use Lightroom when I want to batch process my images, it's fast and easy.

Behind the scene shots,

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Crazy For Love with Jessy Cortes

This story was inspired by love, love that end, a tragic story of a woman that became crazy after her lover left her.

We had a lot of fun doing this one, it was done at my friend David Café , "León Café Bar". It was an opportunity to set a small studio in a different environment.  For this session I used  2 Canon Speedlites 600ex-rt with a radio transmitter Canon ST-E3-RT, a small LED light, a soft box "Lastolite Beautybox 38cm x 38cm for one of the Speedlite and  a circular white reflector for the second one. To be able to control the exact amount of power I wanted from each flash I  used manual setting.

All the photos were done with a Canon 5DMarkiii and a Canon 24-105 and a Lensbaby soft optic. We also did some glamor shots that day that will be part off my next post.

Jessy was amazing like always, her play was so intense, my goal was to capture the intensity and let the photos echo how great her performance was.
 

The story,

" after her lover left her she went out for a drink, got drunk and became sad, and crazy.

Second part,

That poor woman got obsessed and crazy, obsessed with her reflection wanted to kill this reflection...
As you can see  Jessy got into her personage like a pro, she had no fear, she was amazing, a real actress a real star.
To get her to look as bad as possible, we used make up and harsh lighting, and the rest was Jessy play!!! I was only taking the shots, to get the mood she created.

I like to take the time to say thank you to my friend David, his Cafe was the perfect setting for our story. I also wanted to mention how lucky I am to work with Jessy, she is so talented and so generous, thank you Jessy:)))

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