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Rui Gaiola
@birdcageliving
Landscape photographer based in Portugal
I was born and raised in the countryside of Portugal, close to the highest mountain of continental Portugal and far from big cities. Sabugal was a quiet place, and besides school, I was spending my time in between the mountains, building tree houses, camping and playing football. Days were long and the year still had four well defined seasons. Life was free, innocent and happy. I left this peaceful place to study and graduated in Graphic Design in Lisbon a few years later. During an internship I realized that it wasn’t at all what I liked to do all day, nor what I would be willing to do as a profession for the rest of my life.
"Even so, I started to work and meanwhile I was searching for a balance between money and a lifestyle that would give me more freedom."
In this search, I found photography. During my photography course in my studies it bored me and I never paid attention, but it resulted to be the missing piece I was looking for to create my ideal lifestyle. I began with street photography and started working for a company doing commercial photography. Meanwhile I had also started to travel to see bigger cities. Coming from such a little town in the middle of nature and never having really traveled before, I was curious to get to know big cities. First Barcelona, London, New York City, Los Angeles…
"I wanted to see the worlds I hadn’t lived, experience how people lived in those metropolises and what happened there."
Until the moment arrived that I had enough of cities. This tipping point came when I did a trip to Yosemite, Portland and Seattle, visiting places and natural parks around. All the landscapes and ambiances made me feel that I wanted to do more trips like that one – road-trip style and back to nature. Back to my roots. I started to prioritize trips that take me to rivers and lakes, to mountains, to hamlets viewed as abandoned but where you find the pureness of genuine people, where local survives the global.
"It felt so good to be surrounded by nature, which made me realize that it’s where I belong."
I started to travel to destinations rich in nature and vast landscapes like Azores, Iceland, and other regions in the USA. I was fascinated by nature’s perfection and how easily it lives and even thrives without us, while we humans cannot survive without it. I could hike for hours and hours simply registering nature in all its behaviors and forms. As I changed my travel style, my photography changed too.
"I began taking travel photography more seriously, to bring home more than just the experience of traveling."
After a while I reached a point that I felt I had to choose for myself and my passion – I quit my job and started freelancing. We only have one life to live and it doesn’t make sense to do what we don’t love. I am always searching for things that make me feel happy and comfortable. And if that changes, I search another thing to do to find that happy feeling again.
"Now I am 32, I have a family with two kids and I found balance between doing what I love, money and time."
I do wedding photography in the high season (Golden Days Photography) and in the winter season I travel. I fell in love with outdoor / landscape/ nature photography, so with this, I became a bit obsessed about exploring new places. My goal is not “look at me traveling to all those places” but what I want is mainly to transmit that these places exist in its most pure form. Meaning that I don’t use filters, I don’t edit my photos much and neither I manipulate my photos. I only take out objects that do not belong in nature, that don’t belong in the photo. I want to share with others the real natural world. I also love it when I receive messages asking for recommendations and tips, I truly enjoy talking about those places and give some advices to turn trips of others into a better experience.
"When I started traveling regularly, quite soon the idea of doing a photography book with my travel images came to my mind."
From that point, all my trips had a subliminal goal behind. I wanted it to be something small first, a little book or collection. But in the end I worked on it for a year, reached almost 300 pages and named it “I could drive these roads forever”. I am quite proud of it, because it’s all made by me. From the photos, to the design, the text, even the release. It was a real investment, in time, energy and money, but I really wanted to do it. Almost every evening when my wife and kids went to bed, I would be working on my book; writing on my phone when already in bed or on my computer where the project was open 24/7. It was like a puzzle; matching photos so it all made sense together, balancing colors and sizes, categorizing countries, writing pieces of text and sentences randomly popping up in my mind that I wanted to use…
Once it was almost finished, I had to promote it and create a network to sell the book, do the packaging and send it out. I organized events in different art galleries, in Lisbon and in Porto, though unfortunately I had to cancel one due to the Coronavirus. Overall, it was a risk; I don’t have a big following, I am not an influencer type of guy and it would take lots of my time. The only thing I was sure of was that I really wanted to realize this. I really wanted to have a book full of all my experiences and travels over four years.
"It took time, but my book is timeless."
"It shows my journey of discovering myself as a person and as a photographer. It shows four years of growing and evolution."
After many overwhelming big cities, I now enjoy pure landscapes and being alone. I live my own story. It can be fun meeting people or traveling together, but it also distracts you from who you are and what you truly feel. I felt like I needed to spend my time on nature, on photography, and above all on my self. To travel and explore nature, to get to know exceptional locations and gaze at astonishing landscapes, to wake up and have meals in places with incredible views, to fall asleep excited about what the next day may bring only to again feel overwhelmed by the beauty of nature – it’s a privilege that gives meaning to my life and overwhelms me while I am on the road.
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