Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable!

I live by this motto. I was taught that you always have to arrive a few minutes earlier than the time you are supposed to be somewhere. And this has caused me my share of long waits. Growing up in Panama where everything runs by the “panamanian time” (basically, getting everywhere at least an hour late) was a nightmare for me. And when I moved to Europe I thought I was going to leave this behind but there is just people who will always arrive late everywhere.

I had greater expectations for London, though. I really thought that people here were as anal as I am with punctuality but that is not the case. I find myself more often than not waiting on others. Everyone blames it on the public transport; it’s not as good as you would expect it to be. But the truth is that if you know the public transport has failures then you should adjust your commuting time accordingly. When I have to be somewhere that is 30 minutes away from where I am, I leave 45 minutes earlier. That way, in a good case scenario I arrive early and in a bad case scenario I still have an additional 15 minutes to make it on time.

In my opinion you don’t want to be known as the person who always arrives late. Nobody wants to work with someone who is not reliable and being late makes you an unreliable person. It shows lack of respect for other people’s times. And this goes as well for your personal life. Anyone can be late that one time, but consistently arriving late is annoying for everyone else and makes others not want to work with you. Or even be your friend.

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Impossible N’est Pas Français

Writing about my journey as a creative has helped me stay humble and appreciate all the things that have happened to me along the way. The good and the evil, because both types of experiences have taught me a lesson and have helped me grow. And my short stay in France was part of that growing experience. Being away from everything and everyone that I knew helped me reconnect with myself. And by reconnecting with myself and listening to my inner voice I realised that the only one stopping me from becoming who I wanted to be was me.

During my French classes I heard the expression “Impossible n’est pas français” for the first time. It means “Impossible isn’t French” and it is attributed to Napoleon. He coined this phrase while trying to encourage his troops to accomplish things that seemed impossible to them. These words and the story behind them resonated in my head like a million bells. I then realised that by labeling goals as “impossible” I was letting my fears take over my future. So I took the phrase and made it mine: “Impossible n’est pas dans mon vocabulaire.” Impossible is not in my vocabulary.

Anyone who has been where I was, not knowing what to do with their life or believing that it is simply not possible to change your life around, can understand what a liberating feeling it was to be able to say to myself: “I am going to be a photographer because I can.” And once you embrace that something changes inside your brain and all of the sudden every single decission you make is a step forward towards your goal. And my first decission was to go back to Barcelona and figure out what kind of photographer I wanted to be.

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Happy Holidays 2014

Thanks to everyone who supported me and believed in me throughout this year. It has been an amazing journey. Bring it on, 2015! Happy holidays everyone!

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Lost

After New York City, life took me back to Barcelona. I consider myself an adventureous person and I live for the thrill of moving from one country to another. But this time it didn’t feel exciting at all. First of all, I didn’t want to go back. The country was living the worst recession of the last I-really-don’t-know-how-many years, unemployment rates were sky high and everywhere you went people were walking around with a dark cloud over their heads. Second of all, that atmosphere made it even harder for me to think about leaving my day job and venturing into photography. And lastly, I felt lost. I knew that I wasn’t following my path but I just didn’t know what to do, where to go, who to talk to…

I started to feel very frustrated and when things got complicated at work I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I left my day job and took some time for myself to think about my life, to embrace my accomplishments, to study my failures and to plan for my future. My husband suggested that I went to France with the excuse of studying French. He thought that if I went away all by myself I would be able to listen to my inner voice without all the noise of everything else that was going on in my life at the moment. And it worked. After a few weeks my head was clearer and I was able to visualise my future for the first time. I was going to be a photographer.

Now I needed a plan.

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Models Are Persons Too

Whenever I plan a shoot I always ask my team to make the models feel as good as possible. After all, their faces are the ones showing in my photos and the camera does not lie: if they are uncomfortable, it will show. Besides, I strongly believe that when the team you work with is happy everyone will work better. I always try to mantain a calm and relaxed atmosphere on set, I have food and beverages for everyone and I try to give positive and constructive feedback all the time.

That is why it surprises me when the models that I work with tell me that they are very happy that I have food on the set or that they really like that I try to make them feel good all the time because other photographers they have worked with just do not care. To me this is common sense: I want this people to give me their best so I try to give them my best as well.

Think about it: most of these models are doing two or three shoots or castings a day so before they got to yours they probably already posed for someone else. And even if yours was the first shoot of the day, they spend all their time being the canvas on which us creatives work. Imagine how that can get pretty exhausting and it can also make you feel vulnerable and self-conscious because you are being judged all the time. And it’s true, it’s their job. But I think that it is also true that you as a photographer are the leader of a team and it’s your responsibility to make sure that your team is comfortable doing their job.

Of course, this does not only apply to models; the whole crew must be kept in mind. So the next time that you are working on a shoot remember to have refreshments and to make your team feel so good that they would do anything that you ask them to do. In the end, it’s not only about the person who is behind the camera: everyone’s role is crucial when it comes to getting that money shot.

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If You Win, Wou Will Be Happy; If You Loose You Will Be Wise

If you have been following my blog by this time you already know that taking the decission of becoming a photographer and actually becoming one took me many years. There were many factors involved: fear of loosing my stability, fear of venturing into something new and unknown, fear of failing… Ok, I admit it, there was only one factor: fear.

Throughout my life and whenever I was about to make a big change I always embraced fear and turned it into the fuel that fed my inner engine and kept me moving. So, why was this time being so different? It felt really different, I can tell you that! Because now the change that I was going to make affected me for the rest of my life in ways I couldn’t even measure. And also because I was very close to becoming 40 and it felt like suicide to break away from everything and start all over from scratch. There I was, with that piece of paper in my hands that said that I was a professional photographer and all I could think of was “how can I call myself a photographer if I don’t even know what the profession of a photographer is like?”

Thankfully, I had my husband by my side, a very wise man who told me that being afraid was ok. “Take the risk: if you win, you will be happy; if you loose you will be wise”, he said. So I decided to take the risk. I sat down in my computer and started my To Do list on how to become a photographer. First item on the list? Start taking some photos!

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When Life Gives You Lemons...

I has never felt more true that it's not the camera or the equipment, it's the photographer. This week my camera is in the shop and my computer crashed the day after (the second time in less than a year that my MBP2011 crashes due to a graphic card issue that Apple has yet to acknowledge). So I was basically left without the tools of the trade for this week's editorial shoot. But the show must go on so I borrowed a camera from my assistant and a computer from someone else and shot the editorial flawlessly. Lesson learned: when life gives you lemons, look for tequila and salt!

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In A New York State Of Mind

I love big cities. I was born in a very tiny country but with a big, bustling capital: Panama City. So it feels natural for me to pick a big city every time I move from one country to another. From Panama City I moved to Barcelona, and from Barcelona my work took me to New York. It was not love at first sight, though. I had already travelled a lot and lived in big cities so New York did not feel that impressive to me. But one thing is walking its streets as a tourist and a very different one is feeling a newyorker for a little while. The city of dreams made me feel alive and powerful and it made me realize that if you really want to accomplish something you have the power inside of you to do it. And no one can tell you otherwise.

It was in New York where I decided that I was going to become a photographer. I had no idea how, when or where, but I knew it in my heart that this is the path that I wanted to follow. It all began when I met my friend Erik Jiménez-Rodríguez, an incredible photographer who is married to my very dear friend. By talking to him about his work and the craft I started feeling that itch inside of me that was telling me “this is the call you have been waiting for.” So I started thinking about it more and more and telling my friends that this is what I wanted to do until I just could not see myself doing anything else other than this. But, how to do it? I still had my full-time job in a different industry, and even though I had already bought my first DSLR, most of the photos I was taking back then were with the camera in automatic mode.Then one day I opened a magazine and saw and ad for The New York Institute of Photography and thought “you gotta start somewhere…” and decided to enroll. It took me almost 3 years to finish Photography school because my day job was very demanding and I had to travel so much that I could only study during the weekends. But with a lot of determination and with the guidance of my tutor Chris Corradino I managed to finish the course. I was only 2 years away from finally having the courage to say “Hi, my name is JC, and I am a photographer.”

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We climb and then we lift

Me during the Art of Collaboration Business Masterclass

Last week I was invited by The Freelancer Club and by Shooting Beauty to be a panelist during their Business Masterclass entitled “The Art of Collaboration.” Like I told the audience that night when I received the invitation I really didn’t know what to say that could be so interesting for them to want to come and listen to. After all, I just started doing this myself a few months ago. But my husband reminded me that in only 6 months I went from not having a portfolio at all to being published in several magazines and having the opportunity to work with such amazing creatives in the many shoots that we planned (spoiler alert! I will tell you all about this in future posts so keep an eye on my blog!). So, that’s what I did. I stood there, in front of all those people and spoke about my journey as a starting creative. And the connection I felt with the audience was unbelievable! It felt so good to help and inspire others with my story. I feel so humbled and flattered by all the positive feedback I have been getting ever since. Being a starting creative can get very lonely and at times even make you feel lost. But when you hear of others who are going through the same things that you are you can’t help but feel related and regain hope. We are all in this together so why not empower each other and while we are climbing reach out and grab the hand of those who are just starting out and give them a little lift. It feels really amazing to pay forward all the good things that have happened to me in the last few months.

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So, how do you go from a [place any non-creative job here] to a full-time creative?

Sun going down behind the Tibidabo in Barcelona

The answer to this question is very clichéed: by taking the first step. It’s true, even though it’s easier said than done. For me that first step was buying my very first camera.

If you read my previous post you already know that I’ve always had this voice inside of me that wanted to express something. I just didn’t know what or how. The only thing I knew for sure was that I needed to do something about it because my levels of frustation with the life I was living were sky high.

I not always knew that I wanted to become a photographer. In fact, like many creatives out there I feel like I am good at many things. And I enjoy doing them all. So on the road to self-discovery I tried many different creative paths: dancing, writing, cooking… and of course, photography. But it wasn’t until I tried photography that I found a special connection with the medium. I bought my first camera very late in my life, at age 25. It was a digital compact camera. I took that camera everywhere I went: on trips, to parties, to family events, you name it. And people seemed to like my photos. I remember my mom would say that she only wanted me to photograph her because I was the only one who made her smile and look pretty. But at that time photography was just a hobby for me. 

It wasn’t until I became 30 that I started looking at photography with different eyes. I was living in Barcelona at the time and moved into a flat with amazing views of the Tibidabo, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. Every day at sundown I was offered amazing views of the sun going down behind the park that were simply too breathtaking not to capture in photo. Those were the views that inspired “Finestres”, an ongoing personal project in which I photograph the views from every flat in every city I live in. 

For the next 5 years I basically took landscape photos, but I don’t think I was any good at it. I just loved the medium and enjoyed the experience of capturing moments. When that little compact camera turned 10 years old I changed it for a hybrid camera. I felt ready for doing more serious work and for starting photographing people. Still as a hobbyist. I hadn’t realised yet the important role that photography would play in my life later on.

I was still an ocean away from discovering my true path…

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My Journey As A Creative

Me at age 3 playing with my dad’s camera

Like many other creatives, I started my professional life in a completely different industry. I studied Computer Engineering at the University and worked in that field for almost 20 years. But everyone who knows me knows that I am not a technical person: I just didn’t have the love for wires that all my coworkers had. Besides, there was always this creative side of me that I felt needed exploring and that was slowly dying inside of me. 

During the years prior to my decision of becoming a photographer I had an internal struggle. I had been working in a great company for many years, I had a steady income, my professional path seemed full of success and I was being given incredible opportunities that were every IT guy’s dream. But I was not happy. I was dangerously approaching 40 and feared that I would end up stuck in a corporate management position watching my life go by.
It took a lot of gut, and a lot of tears too, to finally make up my mind. And I don’t regret it. My life changed completely and all of the sudden Monday’s seemed like an amazing day and the word “work” just sounded like a lot of fun. It was not easy, but it was completely worth it.

Stay with me and I will guide you through the path I followed from doing what I felt was expected of me to becoming the person that I wanted to be.

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