Let there be light by Sara Martins

Hello, My name is Sara and I am a photographer from Porto, Portugal.

Some years ago I started a blog called randomplacesfamiliarplaces to share my photos and connect to others with same love for analog photography as me. I am inspired above all by light, the beginning of it all. How it changes during the day, how it brings to live the smallest of things.

Because I lead a simple life in a wonderful yet quiet city, my focus goes to immediate surroundings and what makes my heart beat with tenderness and love:

what, when, how

When I was in the junior high school, my best friend (at a time) and I used to have this quote taken from one of the teen drama books, it went "Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not, remember that what you have was once among the things you only hoped for." It is by Epicurus and somehow it landed in front of my 13 teenage eyes. It is pretty likely that at that time I had no idea who Epicurus was (even after taking philosophy class two years ago I can recall that he was Greek and a philosopher and started his own thinking path). So I was very young, but this quote made its way into my heart, even though I am not a person of words, I am a person of calculation, growth and cells. I do not know it for sure, but it is one quote that has followed me for almost ten years, everywhere I went, I sort of live by it. It is a sad quote, almost tragic because it presents evolution of the mind and how it will always run ahead of us, changing our direction before we realise it. Thanks to this blog I can now share it with you, and it makes my heart grow fonder.

Q & A with an artist | Mateja Kovač

H  e  l  l  o !  As I promised, I am coming back with a new series of posts where I will do little interviews with some extremely talented people! It will be a great way for me to work out how much time I actually have to spend on blogging nowadays. I found our first artist, Mateja, on Etsy (Oh how I love it, truly!)  She comes from Croatia and has a degree in Art! I was immediately drawn to her works and decided I just have to own one and put it on my wall! :) Pictures in this post were not taken only by me. I wanted to show you more of Mateja's works and I only own one. I asked Mateja a couple of questions, here are her answers!

About surviving and about fall.

Do you know how I managed to survive the first month of fall?

{succesfully staying very true to myself}

I drank as much coffee as I should have.

Just for the taste of it. Not even because I needed an extra energy boost to stay up during the nights. I sort of gave up on going out to get coffee, although it required alot of self-restraint, because so many times I caught myself thinking of getting that one cup on my way home from groceries grabbing. I would always think that it might be few coins closer to my dream vacation or new phone. It helped!

I began working on new projects.

In late September I got so many new ideas on how I would like to build up some community around this blog. Of course I turned to Etsy sellers first, because I very much enjoyed working with some in the past. Quickly after that the packages started to arrive at my door, which required more photos being taken each day! Soon enough (next week to begin with) I will be showing you the second of the collaborations with those great people! Discount codes are coming too! This is exciting. Check out my first collab- BEST FALL SCENTS TO BE FOUND ON ETSY.