Taking Pictures along the way

A Photographer's Journey

It all started with my father’s old camera  during the late 1980s, my wrists had gotten tough
enough to hold the family 1972 Petri Flex,  a sturdy steel 35mm SLR. Back in the old film days
I used to memorize the charts in the back Kodak Gold Film package that had stick men drawings
matching common available light situations with f-stops and shutter speeds.

 

The road, however, started me on the path of graphic design, which during my college days
involved formal photography training, including dark room. It was the 90s, Daft Punk was on top
of the charts with “Around the World” and Radiohead stunned the world with “OK Computer”
and I was still using the old Petri. Back in those days, I was working in a small advertising agency
in downtown Barcelona, right by the famous “Las Ramblas” boulevard.

 

I moved to other side of the world to claim Oregon's fair city of Portland as my home in 1998 and in 2003, I was working in the marketing department of Hoffman Construction, when I picked up the camera again beyond strictly hobby lines. This was a brand new Nikon DSLR D50,
and I took on project progress photo reports, corporate events, headshots and some architectural photography. I was found at times in full safety gear walking on scaffoldings dozen stories up covering amazing feats of architecture and engineering.

 

Must have been the clear air, or the fact that I might have been above the smog for the first time in my life, but something shocked me stronger than my fear of heights other than, my renewed respect to Newton’s laws of gravity. I discovered that a day in the field with the camera hanging from my neck, was hands down a much greater day than sitting in the cubicle, but beyond that, I understood the power of documenting historical change, and planted the seed to what later would lead me to my editorial photographic work.

 

I went on sailing the highly stormy waters of freelance photography in 2008, combining it with graphic design work. By 2014 the tide had fully shifted, I found myself spending less time thinking about scholar margins and more living by the rule of thirds. 

 

As time passed assignments grew in complexity and variety. My editorial work has been enlisted in popular local newspapers, has gone on national newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and even international, specially after I had signed for newswire services, distributing content through the AP and Getty Images circuit. As a small business owner, I have been growing in retail clients, commercial, and government work. I have also been featured in a number of books, and I also have been working as a still photographer in a couple documentaries, "Black, White and Black" was premiered in April 2018, with the second documentary  due later this year.    

 

Of all days, my memory still recalls that one night when everything changed, the April 2013 evening I was given the chance to shoot my very first MLS soccer match between the The Portland Timbers FC v Houston Dynamo for the  soccer blog “ProstAmerika.com". As a fan and former amateur player, this was a bit of a dream come true, I can’t never forget that first game, the heavy rain, the cold and the grit, and how I loved every second of it! And my editorial photography career came to be.