This was the thought I carried with me by the time I received my instructions for my final submission at the ‘Black and white digital development’ course. I thought about how small wounds that I carry on my hands have been so bothering at their time, and how they seem to be so interesting in the skin, they are a way of remembering a moment I took a bad decision, or I was pretty careless to hurt myself in such a stupid way.

The idea became a photograpic intention, and based on what I’ve learned at the course, I decided to pop those small marks on my skin, silly and insignificant ones, and let them star my capture.

I will tell you where some of them come from. The others, honestly, I’ve forgotten about them and the only thing I know is that they’re registered on my skin.

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This were the following results:

This one is an interesting one, I remember it very well. I was skating on an ice rink in the former ‘Avila Mágica’, and as I didn’t know how to skate properly, I fell and cut my wrist with the blade of the skate. I didn’t realize at the moment until my mom saw my wrist bleeding, and believed that something worst had happened. This was the result of the fall and so it is the photo developed in black and white.

Unknown procedence

Gathered marks, callus left from previous jobs where I was expected to carry heavy things. Although this has never caused me any sort of pain, they’re aesthetic details that remind me the efforts I’ve done.

This is the scar I find the hardest to remember. I don’t know if it’s notorious, but it is the scar of a wrong located intravenous needle of time in my life when I got really sick. What I dislike the most of the memory it’s that ever since, I’ve been scared of needles or the fact of getting my blood tested for medical exams, it hurt a lot and it was very uncomfortable. I’m still afraid of needles, but I have to face those kinds of things, so I sweat cold, befriend the nurse and I’m honest from the beginning and I tell her: ‘Hello, I’m afraid of needles, please be considerate with me’, I wait until everything happens and my paleness keeps in complicity with the nurses.

Unknown procedence.

I doubted a little bit about this one, this is a deep wound in my waist, as a consequence of a fall I had while skating. I was going downhill with a friend who lives near my house, I decided to take a curve without stopping with some wheels that didn’t work in a surface with so many inclines… The result was a guy slipping against the floor until he crashed the shoulder with a sidewalk just in front of a local of funeral services, (‘was it a coincidence or a life message?’). This accident made my have the left side of my body immobilized, I couldn’t turn around my neck and, in addition, I had to hide the accident from my mom so I wouldn’t be punished.

Now, I’ll talk about the photos as an activity, it was something very interesting. To think directly abuout the black and white pictures and working in their development as an unit to all the photographic exhibition, makes you understand how delicate it is to manipulate a picture at the digital lab. Seeing the change between details and the intensity of the tones it’s a pleasant result, and I can show you the difference:

The pictures where all developed at Lightroom. I worked the exposure and the general contrast of the photo according the curve of all of them, and then I reinforced the scars with the tool of the brush. At the same way, I emphasized the shadows and the strikes of light.