Leaving Las Vegas Photograph

Paulo Abrantes is 50, Portuguese, and lives near Aveiro City, Portugal. Mood and geometry are an integral part of his work. Both help him shape the abstraction in his street images. Paulo believes that when all the elements come together and the shot works like it should, the image can separate itself from its location and take on a life of its own. This is the main reason Abrantes processes in black & white. His motivation is to present fluid images that might be taken anywhere at any time and he believes black & white works best in achieving these goals. With color images, he feels it is impossible to work freely and yet stay real at the same time. Paulo notes that only black & white allows the possibility to present every frame in such a close, abstract, and personal way. For him, black & white pictures always represent a very personal approach and vision of the world. That is the reason that black & white is his chosen path in photography. Abrantes never uses presets or plug-ins. He always processes in Photoshop in a very basic workflow: curves, levels, exposure, and brightness values in separate layers for what he feels is the maximum personal interpretation of each frame.