• Technical Points:
1) I started to take these photos on 27 August 2024, and I finished on 2 September 2024. I captured these pictures using my Xiaomi Redmi Note 12S, and the camera was in professional mode. This allowed me to close the shutter and adjust the ISO to achieve the desired results. But even so, I needed to use an editor application because I needed to change the clarity, saturation, exposition, temperature, shadows, and more for coming truly into the project’s essence.
2) The pictures were captured at different hours. This is why even closing the shutter and reducing the ISO, in some pictures the light was screaming, so I used an editor to resolve this situation. And I elevated the shadows or the black in the picture, and I reduced the exposition or another element.
3) The three final photos in “The Darkness’ Kiss” weren’t edited in an application. The hour was perfect, so I just adjusted the camera, and I registered the moment with the feeling that I desired. The picture with the sunset and more light was captured with shutter in 1/1000; the sunset picture with more shadows was captured with shutter in 1/2500; and in the final photo the shutter was in 1/20. In these pictures, the ISO was 50.
• Conceptual Points:
“The Darkness’ Kiss” is about seeing the lights and shadows inside yourself and how to transform these different things inside you into a beautiful thing, not to the others, for you. Because you need to live with yourself, so you need to live “in peace”, or balance, with your shadows and lights. Otherwise, they will destroy each other, and this will destroy you.
And this photographic project also tries to express the things that we hide. The excessive shadows are expressing that sometimes we can want to hide something, or some parts of our lives, and that’s okay. Because sometimes we aren’t ready to share everything with everyone, and we just share pieces of our essence, or interpretations of our soul. Sometimes it’s necessary. And sometimes, with only a few people, we share our beauty and beasts.
Victor dos Anjos 