Where I Left Photography… and Where I Found It Again

This space was created to share more than finished images — I want to show the process behind them. The experiments, the failures, the discoveries, the gear, the mindset. Expect tips & tricks, reviews, visual studies, and a lot of conversations about photography as both a craft and an emotional outlet.

Most importantly, I want to build a community that doesn’t just like photography — but truly breathes it.

A bit about me:
I studied Multimedia Art — with a focus on Photography — at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon, back in 2013. My work at the time lived mostly in the analogue world, exploring themes like time, silence, perception, and the very nature of photography itself. I was fascinated by its limits: What is a photograph? Does it need rules? Can it be something more?

This led me to experiment with unconventional mediums — glass printing, lightboxes, installations, chemigrams, and experimental darkroom chemistry. My work was messy, curious and process-driven. The mistake was often the point, never something to hide.

Then, life happened.

For nearly 12 years, photography drifted away from me. Those were difficult years — mentally and emotionally — and there was no room left for creativity.
But something recently pulled me back. And now that I’ve returned… I don’t ever want to let it go again.

What fascinates me most is how much my eyes have changed.
In the past, I only saw the world in black and white. Today, almost everything I make revolves around color — and not just color, but feeling through color.

A big part of this rebirth was (unintentionally) sparked by Fujifilm. And no, this is not an ad. But their cameras reminded me of what I missed — nostalgic, tangible images straight out of the camera, with character, personality, and imperfection. I’m a tech-savvy person, but photography, for me, was never about pixel-perfect edits or software retouching. It was about presence. Moment. Rawness. The beauty of the unexpected. Fujifilm gave me a digital path back to the analogue mindset: film-like color, texture, in-camera “recipes” with no need for post-editing — results that feel finished, imperfect, and alive. The kind of images I used to wait to discover after developing a roll, where the surprises were the magic.

I know the photography world often splits into two extremes — the purists who reject presets entirely, and those who rely on them completely. I sit somewhere in the middle. If something helps people create, connect or fall in love with photography again, it deserves a place in the ecosystem.

After all, photography has always been about light… and what we choose to do with it next.

This blog will be an extension of that journey.
My Instagram — @ictopuz — is my visual diary, but here I want to go deeper: the thoughts, the techniques, the philosophy, the “why” behind every frame.

If you also want to know how to support this new project, please check the Support the Project page or use the links below to “Buy me a Coffee”:

If you’re reading this, thank you for being here at the very beginning.
Let’s build something meaningful — one story, one frame at a time.

Welcome to the process.

— Nuno Tomás