Photos of Escadaria Selarón
About Escadaria Selarón
Escadaria Selarón climbs 215 steps from Rua Joaquim Silva in Lapa up toward the Santa Teresa convent, with every step, wall, and landing along the way covered in ceramic tiles. Chilean artist Jorge Selarón started laying them in 1990 and kept going until his death, and the result is an incredible mix of bright red tile with the green, yellow, and blue of the Brazilian flag, along with hand-painted panels and tiles sent from more than 60 countries. If you look you'll find his repeated motif of a pregnant woman in the painted pieces and for the city and country names lettered into the risers. There are a wide variety of ways to capture this incredible staircase. You can try using a short telephoto to pull the little details out one at a time, or play with using a wide lens from the bottom to stack a series of steps into a wall of colour. Three quarters of the way up the staircase turns a corner which gives you amazing angled lines to experiment with. The glazed surface gives alot of glare under direct sun and the reds lose their rich tones, so try to shoot while the stairwell is in the open shade of the buildings on either side. This usually happens for most of the morning letting the colours stay saturated and even from the bottom step all the way up. It's also best to get there early to avoid the tourists, especially if you want to focus on shooting from the base of the stairs. By late morning the lower landings are full, so if you want fewer people in your frames you will have climb past the crowds and focus on capturing the upper flights. (Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
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