“I could spend hours admiring my surroundings depending on the time of the day and what kind of lighting there is,” says photographer Rodrigo Oliveira in an interview with the Phoblographer. “Anything could look beautiful to me under the right light, and I always wait for the right time of the day to shoot, and that is what gives me the dreamy feeling when I’m shooting, so my photos give that dreamy sensation because it’s exactly how I felt the moment I shot it.” That’s a deep love that so many of us don’t experience as we’re too busy focusing on a specific task. But Rodrigo feels awe when sunset approaches, so he makes his photographs during that time. Indeed, he’s not planning any of it in advance. This sense of adoration for everything around him has earned him the respect of many clients, including those on the VSCO Hub.
This article is presented in partnership with VSCO. If you’re looking to find new work, be sure to check out the new VSCO Hub. Follow Rodrigo at his VSCO profile.
Rodrigo grew up infatuated with the work that he’d seen in National Geographic magazine. “All those gorgeous wildlife, landscapes, and portraiture shots were so interesting to me,” he tells us. “But it wasn’t until I was a Biology undergraduate student that I got my first digital camera, a Nikon D3100. At that time I thought of linking my biology studies with wildlife photography in hopes of becoming a Nat Geo photographer/explorer one day, but in 2013 I got awarded a full paid scholarship to study a year and a half in Melbourne, Australia.” There, he experienced a very multicultural world that fueled his love of portraiture.
To make his images, he goes all in on Nikon. In his hands is the Nikon D850 — which he finds perfect for his commissioned assignments. He pairs it with a Nikon 70-210mm f4-5.6 when shooting portraits. He uses this lens on his Nikon F70 and Nikon F2 film camera too.
“For these cameras I use a wide range of lenses but my favorites are the non-AI Nikkor 50mm f/1.2, great for soft focus,” Rodrigo tells us. “The non-AI Nikkor 35mm f/2 and the AI-S 135mm f/2, all of them are pretty sharp. Nikon’s older lenses are just excellent.” When paired with either Kodak Portra 400, Vision 3 500T, 250D, Cinestill 800T and Fuji Superia Xtra 400, he can get many of the same looks that inspired VSCO.
Sometimes, Rodrigo also uses an iPhone and edits the photos within the VSCO app. However, in general, Rodrigo doesn’t do a lot of post-production. He doesn’t like Lightroom, so he edits in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop to adjust curves and such. And when shooting film, he doesn’t do much besides correcting exposure or removing dust spots. When shooting digital photos, it all just depends on what the clients want — though he works to get it right in-camera as much as possible so he doesn’t need to do much post-production.
His work speaks to an audience that has felt underrepresented for a long time — and in many ways, still is within the art world. Rodrigo Oliveira identifies as a queer black photographer. More than anything though, Rodrigo is trying to spread the message of love.
One thing that I believe stands out in my work is that either my project with queer POCs in Rio de Janeiro or my ongoing project on Barra de Guaratiba comes from a very sensitive place, there’s a strong connection that ties me to these subjects. It comes from someone from within the community and territory. I’m a black queer photographer and working with other creatives on my series ‘Carioca, Negro & Queer’ was very touching as it gave a proper representation of an often marginalized community in Brazil. My ongoing project ‘Barra de Guaratiba: A Love Story’ is a series of photographs taken on film around the suburb I grew up in Rio de Janeiro and spent most of my 32 years. It’s a projects that really grasp that dreamy feeling views have going through my portfolio and it shows a place within a big city that seems to have slowed down in time and retained a healthy laidback lifestyle. Purely a project about the love and respect I have for my roots and I think that’s a differential in itself. Lately I’ve been seeing quite a few projects misrepresenting communities and places that were captured by outsiders. Rio de Janeiro, for example, is all over social media channels but frequently portrayed in ways that just represents an old fashioned stereotype of the city and its culture and I thought that in 2024 people would know better.
Rodrigo Oliveira
He’s represented by Rocket Science Studios, but his website is a big part of what’s getting him his work — and his clients find it to be a great resource. He uses Instagram and social media as a way to keep brands and creative directors updated on his projects — but he mostly uses it for collaborators to contact him. What he’s also been using is VSCO. “VSCO is growing a lot, and I feel like I grew a lot along with it as well; it’s been a part of my journey with photography since I started back in 2014 when VSCO was a preset pack for ACR and not yet an app,” he tells us. “Recently, VSCO released the VSCO Hub feature to connect pro members with brands and clients, so I’m looking forward to having some opportunities coming from there, too.”
Like every other photographer, he’s feeling out his own feelings with AI and such. He believes it to be a fun, creative tool and that it can help people make things that otherwise weren’t possible. “But there’s also the potential to create scenarios and situations based on real people or real life events that does not depict the truth and this can be very confusing and not everyone makes the effort to tell AI from reality apart before making a judgment,” he says. And this is part of what so many photographers like Rodrigo are trying to combat with authenticity efforts.
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.
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