148 MacDirectory FEATURE PIXELPASTA > PROVING THAT REALITY IS YOUR PERCEPTION Caesar Lima is a world-renowned photographer with a reputation for constantly keeping his audiences on their toes with his innovative, unique photographic concepts. Talented, driven, and always looking for new and better ways to get his message across, Lima has proven himself more than able to move seamlessly from one style of photography to another while still, and always, maintaining his edge. Lima credits his success to a variety of factors, including constantly studying his art, keeping his mind open, and, perhaps most of all, not letting himself be intimidated by new ways of doing things. It was in the spirit of the latter, in fact, that Lima, never one to rest on his laurels, launched a new area of business. It's called Pixelpasta and is a seamless blending of photographic magic and digitalization. Viewing the portfolio online at I found myself wonder- ing how much, if any, of the photographs were digital – an effect, Lima told MacDirectory during a recent interview, that is as intentional as it is artistic. MacDirectory > So how exactly did Pixelpasta come about? Caesar Lima > What happened is this. When the whole thing became digital, that is when (photography) transitioned from film to digital, photographers started to lose control of their product. MD > In what way? CL > Well, with digital, you just had a file and you handed it over. In the old days if you wanted to do (special effects) you had to set it up and shoot it. With digital you just had film, a picture of a person or whatever, and we would hand it over to clients and they would finish the job and sometimes they would do a good job and sometimes not. What it is…the way we shoot these days – we shoot in layers, six or seven shots – even when you use models you'll bring in the background later. So you compose an image in your head and then bring it all together. If you shoot and you don't do all the retouching, weird things can happen. You can end up spending a lot of time, that isn't billable, explaining to people why you shot what you shot the way you did it. MD > So Pixelpasta was a way to let people know that you could do the whole shoot from start to finish? CL > Yes, we all got together and said we need to let people know we'd rather finish the image, and the best way is to have a division that covers the whole thing. So we came up with Pixelpasta, because the name Pixelpasta plays with things that you put together. MD > How did your customers respond to the new division? CL > Clients got excited that I was taking it a little further and making it into a new WORDS BY JONE DEVLIN CONTINUED ON PAGE 152