In the Mirandese Plateau, the top-right corner of the country, the pre-Christian Winter Solstice celebrations don't really look like other that happen nearby. Something to expect from a region with such a strong identity that's where Portugal's other official language can be found.

São Tomé is a small island lying over the equator line, right of the coast in the Gulf of Guinea. A place filled with what used to be intensive plantations from now gone colonial times. What's left today is a laid back mood where things have a slower pace called "leve-leve".

Having part of my family roots in the Beira Baixa region in Portugal means that forest fires have been something quite familiar. Back in the 2003 fires one of my most vivid memories of the aftermath was the complete darkness of the following Winter, the blackened hills covered by dark clouds. After the 2017 fires, when the hills around my house where consumed by flames, I knew I wanted to capture Winter's arrival.

Liga dos Últimos or the League of the Last. A side project of some time, one of those themes I pay attention over and over: abandoned, out of place or somehow peculiar football fields.

Each June Lisbon gets ready for "its month", the 13th of June is the day of Saint Anthony, the city's patron saint, and on on the eve of that day but also the rest of the month. The first summer nights mean crowds of locals and visitors meet at the older parts of the city: Alfama, Graça, Mouraria or Bica. The streets get decorated with shiny lights, every corner is good enough for dancing and the small shrines to honor the saint share the narrow streets with street stands selling beer or sardines. Like in many other places, the profane lives side by side with the sacred.

The mountains of the Atlas provide a setting that's strange for a western, even one from a neighboring country like myself. You do not expect such massive mountains in a place where should be desert, you do not expect to hear the muezzin calling echoing between narrow valleys and steep mountains.

Lazarim, a quiet small village tucked at Montemuro mountain range, set apart from the many places in northern Portugal and Spain with strong masked festivities with elaborate wooden masks made with alder. As Shrovetide approaches, the village gets ready and craftsmen finish their work for the village's revived tradition.

The hypnotizing colors of India's colorful state.

There are nearly one hundred chats in Varanasi, the riverfront steps that lead to the holiest of rivers, according to Hindus, to those living close to its waters, and specially those whose lives end there.

Quite often my wanderings in the streets of Havana, Cienfuegos and Trinidad ended with a cup of coffee, or at least a relaxed conversation away from the heat of the streets.

The weeks in Cuba just before the opening of the American Embassy in Havana. The strange feeling of being in between two worlds, the mix of the anticipation for the changes that might come with the reality of everyday life and that nothing has actually changed yet.

A very unique kind of bullfight, where a group of men carry a large wooden frame, that takes place at a very delimited region in the North of Portugal. Read more about it here

The celebration of death, something so typical of Catholicism and specially in the Holy Week, seen here as celebrated in Braga, with it's iconic masked penitents and intense processions. Read more about it here.

The photo project of my Visual Storytelling where I followed the workers at the Perè Lachaise cemetery at Paris. Read more about it here: http://www.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/2014/04/workers-pere-lachaise/

Arrived at Bagan with my mind filled with cliches and pretty images, lovely colors of iconic sunsets and ethereal balloons floating above the temples, an image almost too unreal to be true. Moving away from the photo clichés of Bagan, that immediately jumps to someone's eyes.

Roughly two years ago, by the end of 2011, I started to photograph the many rallies and protests that were happening in Lisbon. It was the year things went downhill here in Portugal, with a bailout and budget cuts everywhere, so protests became more regular and larger. In those two years I tried to capture the many faces that of those protests.

Sule Paya, Botataung Paya and the mighty Shwedagon Paya. A serene oasis from the hectic streets

Leaving from Yangon, arriving at Yangon. A two hour slow trip around the big city's suburbs.

A personal project, the harvest of small, family sized vineyards, as opposed to the large scale vineyards of Alentejo or Douro Valley.