I have lived in São Paulo (Brazil) for almost 30 years (then moved to Canada), but it was quite rare for me to go out and shoot, because I was too afraid to go out alone and take my camera out, even though it was a Pentax K1000 aged 20+ years. Today, I shoot mostly with a Nikon D90, Olympus E-PL5 (it's so light to carry around on a daily basis) and a Samsung phone, but I occasionally dust off the K1000 and shoot with it - I am still to try developing a film using coffee and vitamin C.

In the last years my photos have been published by several Brazilian newspapers, magazines and websites, including three cover pages of the Diário Oficial de São Paulo.

The first camera I have ever used was a Kodak Instamatic (126 film), when I was less than 10. My parents then bought two Yashicas (one blue, the other black, but I don't recall the models). I wanted a better camera, an SLR, but didn't work and had to choose other things as Christmas/birthday presents. When I was in college, I had photojournalism classes, in which I could use for the first time SLRs (Pentax K1000 and Mz-m).

When I was 21 (I think), my brother-in-law gave me his K1000, which was not in use for over 15 years. I used it quite a lot, but only to make photographs of the family or to shoot simple things. An ex-girlfriend gave a Polaroid 600, but I never got used to that camera after a couple of years.

When I moved on in life and in with my girlfriend, she had a Sony Mavica FD-75 and it was my beginning in digital. The quality of pictures was not great, but it was amazing how I was able to experiment and try new stuff, different angles and not be afraid that it'd cost me a lot of money to develop and scan everything. I bought a Pentax Optio S4 (I also had mobile phones with cameras, but never used them until my first Android).

My first step towards something a little more professional was when I got a Sony Cybershot H50 for Christmas in 2008. It is quite a good camera, but I was somewhat disappointed with it, specially after I used my old K1000. The biggest problems with it is the delay between pressing the shutter and have the photo taken and lack of support for external flash unit. I shot a few events with it and there is a lot of noise in the prints when I used high ISO. The following Christmas I decided to give myself a DSLR and bought a Nikon D90 (I had used my brother-in-law's D40, loved it, but wanted something a little more professional) with 50mm f/1.8 lens. And it was love at first click.

One of the the best things I could have done was to become a more active member here on Flickr. I found a group for photowalks around São Paulo (clicksp), met a lot of nice people, exchanged a lot of experience with them and got acquainted with a lot of work from very talented people, professionals, semi-pros and amateurs and this, I think, have helped me to improve my work and always try different things.

Since carrying the D90 with a 28-85 mm lens is not an easy task on my back, I decided to give a compact system camera a try. After doing a lot of research, I decided to go with the Olympus E-PL5 (support to external mic, a decent amount of lenses to choose from - I just wish the sensor were bigger). It took me a while to learn to use it properly, but I enjoy the results I can achieve on it today.

I love to shoot concerts, theatre, dance, food, sports, animals (cats are my favourite) and activities for people with disabilities.

Thanks in advance for viewing and commenting.