Photography Blog: Central Chile

Chile, Playa de TongoyDJI Mavic Pro 2/ ISO 100 - f/4 - 1/80 — Chile, Playa de Tongoy
DJI Mavic Pro 2/ ISO 100 - f/4 - 1/80

If you missed the first part of the blog, you can read it here.

After my trip to Chile in November 2019, I returned to Germany and without having scheduled it I traveled again to Chile in February 2020. In this opportunity, I traveled together with Leonie, for those who don't know she is my girlfriend and I took the opportunity to introduce her to my family officially. We landed in Santiago for my birthday on February 7th and flew back to my hometown; La Serena.

This blog takes place in the north-central part of Chile, overlooking Valparaíso, La Serena, and Coquimbo.

On the first days of our stay, we stayed in my hometown to enjoy the beaches and the food. These first days were really good, the coast of northern Chile is really beautiful. The climate is not extremely hot in summer, nor extremely cold in winter. We enjoyed perfect sunsets every day and taking advantage of the light we did photo sessions on the beaches of Tongoy and Totoralillo.

Tips: In my personal opinion, almost any photo improves automatically if it is taken in soft light, that is, when the sun is low and the shadows lose their hard edges before the sunset or after the sunrise. Soft light is also found on cloudy days and underwater as clouds and water act as a great light diffuser, so the light is quite pleasant to the eye.

The first series of photos was taken at Tongoy beach, located half an hour drive from La Serena. There we enjoyed the beach while we were waiting for the soft light. We took lifestyle pictures and environmental portraits with a Jeep Wrangler.

Advice: In this photo session I started shooting before sunset in relatively harsh light. A practical tip is to photograph in the shadows. I used the shadows of the Jeep at first to avoid the hard light, and as the day went by I got out of the shadows to use the direct light. For these photos, I used side lights to give the pictures a dramatic touch. Then I used backlighting to decrease contrast and clarity looking for a dreamy look. Then, almost at the end of the day, I took advantage of the blue hour to photograph the car and give an ending to this story.

Advice: To photograph in the blue hour you need fast lenses because the light is scarce. I always recommend photographing in the direction of the sunset, because this spot is always brigther. Also, try to complement the photo with artificial light sources, such as house lights, flashlights, etc. In this case, I used the car's lights as an additional light source, being able to highlight the textures of the floor in the foreground. If you notice, the car lights are warm and the ambient light is cold. In this way, the picture adopts a nice complementary color palette.

Then night fell and we went to the village of Tongoy to eat our well-deserved empanadas.

Our next locations were Playa Blanca and Totoralillo. In Playa Blanca we relaxed, sunbathed, swam, and drank the typical Chilean instant coffee (Which I do not recommend). We took pictures of the place and headed to our goal for the sunset; Totoralillo.

TotoralilloCanon EOS R + 24-70mm f/2.8/ ISO 100 - f/2.8 - 1/1250 sec. — Totoralillo
Canon EOS R + 24-70mm f/2.8/ ISO 100 - f/2.8 - 1/1250 sec.

Advice: Watch out for the loss of contrast and information. Everyone knows the limitations of their cameras. Here I used large apertures to even lose sharpness and give the photos a dreamy feel. I also used the window glass to create natural reflections and frame my pictures.

After having done everything successfully, we returned to Coquimbo to eat even more. For the final leg of this trip, we spent a couple of days in Valparaiso and Concon, where my last photography location took place.

Valparaiso is a unique city in its class, they call it the city of poets because it has been the inspiration for many artists of all kinds. That's why it's considered a bohemian city with a very active nightlife.

After resting and walking along the coast to find our last location; Las Dunas de Concon.

This place seemed to be quite far from where we were. Fortunately, it wasn't, they were relatively close but the road was badly marked, for this reason, we made a few stops before reaching our destination, we even had time to swim at a beach we found over there.

Advice: When shooting on beaches or sandy places, be very careful with your camera and lens if they are not weather resistant. The photos were taken with relatively strong light, so you have to be carefully shooting under these light conditions because you take the risk of losing all the information in the sky.

This stop was one of the last ones we made. Then we stayed one day in Santiago and went back to Germany to lock ourselves down because of the coronavirus.

Photography Blog: Central Chile

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