Rodrigo Braga

At Calle 44, I work across photography, editing and digital communication. I photograph concerts and events, turn those records into galleries and artist profiles on the website, and create content for social media. Three strands of the same project, with one shared goal: to document and give visibility to what happens around me.

«The sea does not write on paper. It writes in marks.» The project brings together a photo essay, a short documentary, O Código Poveiro, and a written essay on the history, use and heritage value of the marks.

In the field, original marks turned out to be rare. What remains are mostly recent tributes to Póvoa’s identity: on shutters, on tiles, on the pavement. The website gathers it all into a route that starts at Póvoa’s coordinates.

The logo starts from the P: simple, direct and easy to spot from a distance. The circular seal says the rest, Lista P, candidate for the Student Union.

The slogan «Por pessoas, para pessoas» (by people, for people) moved onto the mug, the tote and the t-shirt. The posters announced the three voting days, 3 to 5 November, with the list’s roles and goals. On Instagram, the same visual line introduced the team, the tournaments and the events, the P always in sight.

The symbol joins the R and the B into one drawing inside a square frame, in orange. It works alone on a social profile and next to the name, as a horizontal logo. For Instagram the brand became a Portuguese number plate carrying @rbdetailing.pt; for TikTok it was drawn in foam on a car bonnet.

On Instagram, every week has its own format: the drinks, fresh and grocery catalogues, featured products and the new arrivals at the warehouse, always in the same red-and-paper visual line.

The website presents the company and its catalogues to trade customers, in the same tone as the social media.

I photographed Vila do Conde and Póvoa de Varzim, two towns I know well, as if they were scale models. I looked for high vantage points, because the effect works best from above.

I had no tilt-shift lens. I shot with a Canon EOS M200 and built the effect in editing, with selective blur in Photoshop and colour and contrast in Lightroom. The question I wanted to leave the reader with is simple: “Is this real?”

I wanted to document this hike, among many other activities, to remember it. But above all I used it to train my filming, editing and post-production skills, colour grading included.