Funchal-based Madeira photographer. 18 years behind a camera.
Like a time machine
As a child I noticed that when I look at photographs I took myself, I am carried back with almost impossible precision, as if in a time machine. To the same place, into the same atmosphere. Only now it unfolds inside me.
That became the turning point. Nothing else interested me after that. From every shoot I have always wanted to bring back the most valuable thing: what I felt at the moment I pressed the shutter.
An instant that does not feel like an instant
All my life, without quite realising it, I have been working towards exactly this. To capture a moment of people's lives so that it is very beautiful and draws the viewer into the atmosphere of that instant. But so that the instant does not feel like an instant.
Many photographers, masters among them, chase the feeling of the moment. For me as the author, something else matters more. The person looking at my photograph and the person in it do not just see the moment. Through the frame they unfold again, in their own body, the reality as I felt it when I pressed the shutter.
My photographs are not just pictures. They are a way to find yourself in the middle of my soul, and to feel in your own body what I felt when I put that scene into the frame with admiration. And what I put there is not something that simply looks good or matches references or someone else's ideas. It comes one hundred per cent from inspiration and reflects how I felt about what was happening around me.
Different things bring that admiration. But most often, and this is the most valuable, it is when absolutely every parameter of reality comes together into one ensemble. Then I feel a celebration inside me, an elated creative mood. I am a witness to life, a witness to truth, not to pretence staged with props. I love it when people live their real lives and do not pretend to be anyone else. That gives me the greatest satisfaction a shoot can give.
My photographs are a way to find yourself in the middle of my soul.
How a session goes
Very many of my clients have never been photographed before. People who aren't performing for a camera give you something that trained models rarely do. In the first minutes of a session my job is simple: give people permission to enjoy themselves and stop worrying about the result.
I am not against posing. Sometimes the posing itself looks so sweet and natural that it becomes a genuine moment. It earns its place in this beautiful reality, and I want to keep it too. But more often I give clients simple tasks. They inevitably lead to situations where the emotions arise on their own.
On a shoot I often start a conversation between the two of them. I ask them to ask each other something they have never asked before. Or I ask one of them to whisper in the other's ear something they will do for them tomorrow.
I enjoy being able to create moments like these, and clients enjoy living through them. After a session people often tell me exactly that: it was a pleasure, and the experience was new for them, engaging, fun and comfortable.
I am a witness to life, a witness to truth.
The story of one proposal at Miradouro do Guindaste →
About me
I have been photographing professionally since 2008. I studied with the photographer Eduard Stelmakh. Photography isn't something I chose rationally. It's something I'm apparently built for.
I lived in Thailand for ten years, shooting couples and families from every part of the world. I have worked in Cannes and Monaco, and with the brands Kenzo and Anantara Resorts. My work has been published in Airplane Magazine. I have lived on islands for more than half my life.
Then Madeira happened, and I stopped looking for anywhere else. I came to visit my sister, who already lived here. No plans to stay. Within hours I knew I wasn't leaving. We had been looking for a specific place for a long time: moderate humidity, no mosquitoes, mountains, forest, real seasons. Madeira was exactly that. But what I didn't expect was what the island does to a photograph.
The light spectrum here is unlike anywhere I've shot. The Atlantic position, the altitude, the constant interaction of cloud and sun mean the sensor fills with photons across the full visible spectrum in a way that simply doesn't happen in most places. The result is colour that's rich without being saturated. Natural without being flat.
I grew up inspired by film photography. The way Kodak Portra renders skin, the way CineStill handles evening light: that colour science shaped how I see before I ever picked up a camera. My work is a mix of modern equipment, fixed classical optics and that film era colour philosophy. The goal is an image you want to look at more than once. A frame where you notice a new detail on the third look, and that detail brings the moment back.
Practical details
We start on WhatsApp, usually weeks before you fly. You tell me your dates and roughly what you want. I suggest locations and a time of day, because the hour matters more than the date here. If you already have a place in mind, send it and I'll tell you whether it works with people in the frame.
If the weather isn't right, we move the session to another day, free of charge.
On the day I meet you at the location, or pick you up in Funchal if you've added transport. The first ten minutes are for walking and talking, not photographs.
Edited photos come back within ten days, delivered as a download at full resolution with no watermark and no print restrictions. They are yours. Print them, frame them, put them wherever you want.
It matters to me that you understand how I work. My portfolio is made of real sessions with clients, so you can see how a shoot goes and the level of my work. A selection of your photos goes into it too, on this site and on social media. If you need full privacy, that is also possible, at double the package price.
Based in Funchal, working across the whole island. Sessions in English, Russian or Ukrainian, whichever is easier for you.
I shoot on a Canon 1DS Mark III with fixed classical optics rather than zooms. It's older equipment by current standards and I keep using it deliberately, because of how it renders skin and how it handles the light here.
1,000+ sessions over 18 years, 4 of them here. Every photo is processed by hand. No presets applied in bulk, no work sent to an editing service.