Are You Running The Rat Race?

We live in a society where more is more and being the best is better. We have been taught that success equals having more money, more possesions, more of everything and especially more than what the rest has. It is as if we had been programmed to be like those rats in the lab that run tirelessly on their exercise wheels just because that is what you are meant to do. Without going anywhere, without achieving anything meaningful. Just running. Our modern business culture is like a rat race. And, as someone famously said, what’s the point of winning the rat race if in the end you are still a rat?

Along the way someone forgot to teach us that the real success is
not achieving those goals but being happy while pursuing them, loving
what you do, feeling comfortable in your skin and sharing that special
feeling with those who matter the most to you. Be it your spouse,
family, friends, coworkers, team members, neighbours… Of course, we all have bills to pay and we all want to run a succesful business, but working our lives away just to make it to the end of the month or just to outdo the competition does not add any value to our lives.

When was the last time that you opened your eyes in the morning and thought “Gee, I’m so happy that it’s Monday!”? Us creatives may not have a proper beginning or a proper end of the week, but this still applies to us. When was the last time that you got home from work completely exhausted but with a smile on your face and feeling fulfilled? When was the last time that you felt happy with what you do?

Instead of spending our days trying to make more money or trying to be better than the competition, why don’t we try to focus in ourselves? Albert Camus once said “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” Let’s stop trying to win this race and let’s start focusing in our personal growth. Let’s try to learn something new as often as we can, let’s try to improve our skills and become better in our craft, let’s try to make deeper connections with the people that we interact with. We might feel today that being successful is about making a lot of money, having a million clients or even becoming famous. But in the end, money comes and goes, clients are here today and maybe not tomorrow and fame is ephemeral and all that we are left with is what we have learned from the experiences that we have lived. Let every experience in your life be worthy of a life worth living.

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Why Is A Community Important For Creatives?

If you have been following my blog you may know by now that when I arrived in London I had little experience in the field and my portfolio was very poor. It wasn’t until I started hanging out with peers and meeting other creatives in networking events that I started growing as a creative myself. Learning from them and their experiences, getting inspiration from their work and feeling supported by people who understood what I was going through were key factors in my professional development. 

Networking events for creatives are not a modern invention. The famous names in art history had gatherings of their own where they exchanged ideas, techniques and struggles and the major artistic movements that we know today wouldn’t have existed if there hadn’t been a group of creatives who constantly seeked like-minded peers with whom to collaborate with. Picasso would have never been one of the major names in Cubism if he hadn’t frequented the Paris art scene of his time; Bourke-White would have never become one of the greatest photographers of the past century if she hadn’t met White, who was friends with Stieglitz, the founder of the Camera Club. 

Knowledge exchange among peers is not only beneficial for the individual but for the community as well. Creatives who work isolated from what their peers are doing risk getting stuck in what they do. They don’t find out about the trends in the industry, they don’t know if other creatives are coming up with solutions to challenges that they face and their professional development is slower because they don’t learn from other people’s experiences and mistakes. But those creatives who push themselves to be better than the rest encourage innovation and raise the quality of the industry and give a better reputation to our profession. This translates into clients having more and better options to choose from when looking for creatives to fulfill their needs. 

But creatives who are protectionists with their knowledge for fear of empowering competitors so much that they steal their clients away from them become victims of their own greed. The rest of the industry will grow faster, will get better at what they do and will become the trendsetters who eventually will keep the clients anyways. Because when clients realise that their suppliers are becoming isolated from the industry and are not being innovative enough they simply leave on their own. 

Being a creative can be a very lonely and misunderstood profession if we don’t have a support group that encourages us to keep on going. Don’t make it harder on youself; get off that chair and attend the next networking event in town. You will not only be doing yourself a favour but you will be making our community stronger and better for the rest of us out there.

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Show Up To Give, Not To Take

I read an interview with Simon Sinek on his TED Talk of 2009 where he spoke about the concept of showing up to give, not to take. This concept resonated in my mind because I could completely relate to it. Wherever you go, whatever you do, if you show up to give something, be it your thoughts, your vision, your personal story, your talent, your feelings or your value, you are more likely to engage with others than if you just show up to take something from them.

When I realised this I learned that whenever I am working for myself or for others, meeting with family, friends or coworkers, visiting clients or collaborators, I should always try to show up with no expectations other than just to give the best in me and add value to our relationship. Because it is not what I can get from them, but what we can build together that matters. Besides, focusing on giving rather than taking makes me a happier and freer person. I no longer have to worry about what I am getting out of everything I do. I just do it because I love doing it.

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Organising Your First Photoshoot: What You Need To Know. Part 4.

When I started writing this post I never realised how much information I
felt I needed to share, but when I finished and saw that my post looked
more like a book than like a blog post I decided to divide it in
several parts. In case you landed here directly, this is the last part of four.

On the last three posts I have taken you through the process of writing a casting call whenever you are looking for creatives to collaborate with on your projects. On this last part of my posts on everything you need to know when organising your first photoshoot, I will give you some tips on managing expectations as a photographer when working with other creatives.

After placing your casting call and getting swamped by applications from fellow creatives you have finally gathered your team for your first photoshoot. You as the organiser of the shoot automatically become the team leader, and as a team leader you have the responsibility to fulfill the expectations of the members of your team. They all trusted you and believed in you when you asked them to collaborate with you on this shoot but now they want to see results to make their times worth. And as a photographer, these results come in the form of quality images. To make sure that you are able to deliver the quality of work your team members are expecting, you first need to be able to transmit a clear vision of the outcome of the photoshoot. And when you are working with people who more often than not have different backgrounds, levels of experience and see life from different perspectives than you, communication is key.

Here are a few tips that I use whenever I am organising a shoot:

1. Put everything in writing and always ask for a read-receipt. Spoken words get carried away by the wind and are always subject to misinterpretation. Put all the communications with the rest of the team in writing and always ask them to reply when they read them. That way you have a proof that every person on the team read the email and you avoid uncomfortable situations by someone claiming they didn’t get the memo. 

2. Your first email to the rest of the team should include as much information as possible about the shoot. This way, if someone does not agree with the terms of the collaboration and decides to leave the team, you have enough time to cast someone to replace them. On this email you should include:

• Everyone’s role and contact info.
• The 5 W’s we learned on the previous post.
• Include your Moodboard and ask for other creatives’ moodboards (MUA, Hair, Stylist, etc). Once you have them, share them with the rest of the team.
• Number of images to be delivered.
• When will this images be delivered.
• If you are sharing expenses in between all the collaborators, a clear figure needs to be informed from the very beginning.
• If the images are meant for submission, let everyone know that magazines do not want to see anything related to the shoot posted online before the release of the issue. This usually includes behind the scenes photos during the shoot.

3. Keep the emails coming. You don’t have to treat your team members like children and be on top of them all the time, but you must follow up and keep the communication flowing through every step of the photoshoot (pre-production, post-production). This way people have a feel that there is work being done. For instance, when the location has been selected, I send an email including a map to the location and useful info on how to get there. Or, once the talent has been selected, I also share photos of them with the team so everyone knows how their faces, hair, bodies look like.

4. Remember that even if your shoot is a collaboration, it doesn’t mean that it is free work. Everyone’s time is valuable. Be as professional as you would be in front of a client.

Well, there is so much that I can say about organising your first photoshoot but I don’t want to bore you to death. If you have any questions or suggestions or if you just want to show your love, leave us a comment below. Until next week!

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Organising Your First Photoshoot: What You Need To Know. Part 3.

When I started writing this post I never realised how much information I felt I needed to share, but when I finished and saw that my post looked more like a book than like a blog post I decided to divide it in several parts. In case you landed here directly, this is the part three.

In my previous two posts I talked about the concepts I had to learn before I organised my first shoot. Today I will talk about how to write a catchy casting call when you look for collaborators on websites like StarNow, ModelMayhem, The Freelancer Club and such.

Before you place the casting call itself, you need to know what you are looking for, who do you want to work with, what is the aim of your shoot. A shoot can be something as simple as a test shoot between you as the photographer and a model, or as a complex as an editorial for a magazine with a full crew of photographer, models, sytlist, MUA, hair stylist, assistants, etc. The clearer the info in the ad looks, the better. For the sake of this post, let’s say that you are organising a menswear AW15 fashion editorial shoot for submission to a magazine.

Let’s break down the casting call into the 5 W’s: who, what, when, where and why.

Who: the who can basically be divided in two: who is placing the casting call and who are you looking for.

What: what is it that you want to do? In this case, a fashion editorial shoot. If you have a concept in mind, you can create a moodboard and upload the photos with the ad or have a link to an online board (I use Pinterest)

When: you don’t necessarily need to know the date at first. But, let’s face it, people are busy and they need to make space in their diaries for collaborations, specially if it means saying no to paid jobs on that day. So having a date in mind will help you get more creatives to apply.

Where: you don’t necessarily need to know the exact location either, but at least mention the city and have an idea of what you want to do. Is it studio work? Or on location? Is it indoors or outdoors?

Why: and finally, why are we doing this? What are we getting in exchange for our time and services? Is it only a shoot for portfolio update or is it for submission? Is it paid, unpaid, TFP? In this case, it would be for submission to a magazine (all these concepts are explained in my previous post).

So now that we have all the info on the shoot, let’s start building our casting call:

Title: it has to be short but contain as much info as possible:

“Photographer looking for full crew in London for editorial submission on May 1.”

Some websites do not allow such long titles so you will have to get creative with abbreviations:

“London TOG needs crew for Mag submission May01.”

Summary: usually websites that do not allow long titles have a summary field where you can explain a little bit more what you are looking for. It would be like a longer version of the title but not as detailed as the content of the casting call.

Content: this would be the content of the casting call itself. Be as specific as the lenght of the casting call allows:

“Photographer is looking for a full crew for a menswear AW15 fashion editorial shoot in East London studio on May 1st 2015, from 10am to 6pm:

* Two agency represented male models: one black and one asian, 6ft tall minimum. 

* An HMUA: with proven experience in grooming.

* A Fashion stylist: with contacts in PR agencies or brands that carry AW15 menswear fashion.

* An Assistant Photographer: with online portfolio and experience with studio lights.

The images will be submitted to a magazine. You can find the moodboard on the following link:

https://www.pinterest.com/greypistachio/editorials/”

And now, you just have to wait for those creatives to apply! On my next post I will give you a few tips on collaborating with fellow creatives and managing expectations as a photographer.

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Organising Your First Photoshoot: What You Need To Know. Part 2.

When I started writing this post I never realised how much information I
felt I needed to share, but when I finished and saw that my post looked
more like a book than like a blog post I decided to divide it in
several parts. In case you landed here directly, this is the part two.

Following up from my previous post, here are a few more concepts that I needed to learn before organising my first photoshoot:

Test shoot: a test shoot is basically a shoot where all the
creatives involved are offering their times to practice a new technique
or to explore a new concept. It could be organised by a photographer
like me who wants to create photos for their portfolio, or by a makeup
artist who wants to try applying makeup on different skin tones, or by a
hair stylist who wants to practice their skills or even by a model who
wants to have more confidence in front of a camera and a crew.

Depending on the type of Test shoot, there are:

Paid Tests: someone
hires the rest of the crew for the test. It is crucial that if there is
at least one creative not getting paid in the crew that said person
knows if someone else is getting paid and why they are asked to do it
without pay. It would be unfair that I went to a test shoot thinking
everyone else is in the same situation that I am in and later on realise
that someone was getting paid while the organiser was taking advantage
of me. In some cases, a paid test means that only expenses are being
covered (travel, food, materials). This needs to be clarifyed in any
communication prior to the shoot.

Unpaid Tests: unpaid
does not mean for free. And this is a really important concept to
understand. An unpaid test is when someone organises a test shoot and
none of the people involved are paid. But not being paid in money does
not make your attendance to the shoot for free. Everyone’s time is
money, so you are working on a shoot where everyone’s precious time is
being invested. Everyone’s materials have a cost, so you are working on a
shoot where everyone is investing money on the materials used
(equipment, makeup, hair products, clothes). And most importantly,
everyone’s reputation is at stake, so you are working on a shoot where
the rest of the creatives are judging you as a collaborator and as a
creative and in the future, if they like you, they might end up
recommending you for a job. So in the end, you might not end up getting
paid in money, but you are getting paid in experience, you are getting
paid in getting the best that other fellow creatives can offer (images,
makeup, hair, clothes, models, assisting) and you are getting paid on
establishing a reputation. So what’s free about unpaid tests?

TF / TFP / Time For Prints:
this type of test shoot specifically suggests that everyone working on
the shoot will give their time in return of receiving images at the end.
The number of images, their type (colour, monochrome), their mood,
every detail has to be agreed before the shoot starts, including the
date when the images will be delivered to everyone involved.

So, after having all those concepts clear, I was ready to look for creatives to collaborate with and post my casting call for my very first shoot. Next week: part 3 on how to write a catchy casting call.

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Organising Your First Photoshoot: What You Need To Know. Part 1.

When I started writing this post I never realised how much information I felt I needed to share, but when I finished and saw that my post looked more like a book than like a blog post I decided to divide it in several parts. In case you landed here directly, this is the part one.

After assisting 4 or 5 different photographers for a few months I thought that I should try and organise my very first shoot. If I wanted to be a fashion photographer I needed to learn from others but I also needed to learn on my own. Besides, as I have said in previous posts, I didn’t have a proper portfolio and I needed the images to create one as well. 

Looking back I must admit that I had no idea if I was going to be able to pull this off, but I was so determined to do it that I didn’t let the fear of failure hold me down. What was there to be afraid of, you may ask? Well, first of all, doing something for the first time is always a little bit scary. Second of all, I knew I had a huge responsibility in my hands: all the creatives involved would want images for their portfolios… what if after all that hard work my images sucked and they felt like they lost their precious times on my shoot? Well, there is always that risk, but as my husband said to me when I shared my thoughts with him: “but, what if the images are great?” Good point.

I decided to post a casting call on ModelMayhem, StarNow and PurplePort asking for creatives who wanted to collaborate on this shoot with me.  I reviewed similar casting calls on those websites to copy the most appropiate wording for mine and also to learn what were the things that I needed to take into account when organising a shoot. And the first thing that struck me was that I had no idea of the terminology used in this industry. So before posting one, I needed to figure out what most of the acronyms and concepts meant. I needed to do some research of my own.

TOG: short for photographer (Photographer ==> Photog ==> Tog)

MUA: Make Up Artist, the person who does makeup.

HS: Hair Stylist, the person who does hair.

HMUA / MUAHS: a person who does both Hair and Make Up.

Fashion Stylist / Wardrobe Stylist / Stylist: the person who will decide which clothes will be used, how will they be used, who will use them or how will the overall mood of the photos will be. Sometimes, they also provide the clothes, sourcing them from designers, brands or PR agencies.

Talent: the persons being photographed or filmed (models, actors, musicians). They can either be freelancers or come from an agency.

Location: where is the shoot taking place. Usually is either in Studio or On Location, which basically means outside a studio and can be Indoors, like at a house, a flat or a hotel room, or outdoors, like in a park, a road or a beach.

Call time: at what time everyone is expected at the location.

Wrap-up time: at what time everyone is expected to vacate the location.

Call sheet: email or document containing all the information for the shoot (date, location, crew, special instructions) that is sent a few days before the shoot so everyone is well informed of what is going on during the day of the shoot.

Submission: in some test shoots, the crew can decide that they will submit the resulting images to a publication (print or online) for self-promotion. It is important that the credits of the whole crew and of all the clothes used are included in the submission.

Moodboard: a moodboard is basically a collection of inspirational images that sets the aesthetics of the whole shoot. It can include samples of posing, styling, makeup, hair, model types, or any other additional information that helps everyone involved in the shoot understand how the final images will look like.

Use of the images: what are the images for (portfolio, submission to publication, commission, commercial or advertisement).

Model / Property / Agency Release: whenever you are photographing a person who is not signed to any agency, a model release has to be signed by that person giving the photographer permission to use the resulting photo in any way specified in the release. If the person belongs to an agency (model, actor, musician), the photographer needs to sign an agreement with the agency where the use of the images is specified. For locations, if you are working in a private property, the owner needs to sign a property release giving the photographer permission to shoot in that location.

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Why We Love Networking (And Why You Should, Too!)

I strongly believe that networking is the key to success. In this day and age when the access to the industry has been democratized and anyone can be anything, the only way to make it is to go out and meet the people who are doing it. When I arrived in this city I knew practically no one and literally had no idea of how things worked in the industry. It was only through meeting people at networking events or via websites where creatives reach out to the community that I was able to do everything I have done so far.

Apart from meeting people through the websites that I have mentioned in prior posts I felt that I needed to meet people in “real” life. So I went back to google and researched networking events in London for the creative industry. I was very fortunate to run into an amazing group of people who had recently started a company to help out freelancers in London develop their careers. They are The Freelancer Club and they hold monthly networking events aimed specifically at creatives. I signed up to one of their events to give them a try and I have to say that most of the people in my team nowadays I met through those events.

Here are a few things that I learned from going to those events:

1. Always bring your business cards.

2. A 5 to 10 minute chat is more than enough to talk about yourself and learn about the others. After that it’s just gossiping.

3. A great contact can be ANYONE in the room. Even the person who looks the strangest or the shyest to you could turn out to be your next client or your lifetime collaborator.

4. Get your ass off the chair and go talk to someone. No one will come to you if you stay in a corner and try to hide. Creatives can smell your fear.

5. Always smile.

6. Never underestimate anyone.

7. Be proud about your work and don’t feel bad about selling yourself too high. That’s what everyone is there for.

8. Follow up after the event. Send an email to everyone you met and keep the relationship alive.

There are hundreds of people just like you out there who are at the same vital moment and who have the same needs that you have and who are desperately looking for people like you to collaborate or work with. But if you don’t go out there and look for them, they will never be able to reach you.

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The Importance Of Assisting Other Photographers

After working as a behind the scenes photographer on my first fashion photoshoot ever I realised that if I wanted to become a fashion photographer I needed to learn from people who were actually working as ones. During the aforementioned shoot I tried to learn as much as I could and ask as many questions as possible, including questions related to the organisation of the shoot itself. And one of the things that I learned from them was that there are a lot of websites where you can place or apply to job posts related to the creative industry: ModelMayhem.com, StarNow.co.uk, PurplePort.com, FashionWorkie.com, FashionJobs.com, Mandy.com, Total-Talent.com, among others.

So I went online and applied to as many posts as possible in which a fashion photographer was looking for an assistant. And I was lucky enough to get a reply right away from a photographer who was shooting a fashion editorial for an online magazine and was desperately looking for someone to assist him after his assistant had to cancel last minute. I was not only going to assist during a fashion shoot but also I was going to learn what it meant to work on a shoot for a magazine.

The night before the shoot I didn’t sleep. I spent the whole night in google researching what it meant to be an assistant to another photographer. Assistant Photographers have to assist a photographer in all aspects of the shoot doing whatever is necessary to ensure that the shoot runs smoothly in everything from administration, to the shoot, to dealing with other crew members and clients.

Basically, an assistant photographer must be organised and practical, understand photography equipment, anticipate the needs of the photographer, have excellent communication skills, be able to foresee and evaluate potential problems, and deal with them calmly, be skilled in image-manipulation and image-management software, pay close attention to detail and be open and willing to learn. During the shoot, the assistant photographer is in charge of transporting the equipment, preparing the set and the lights, metering lights, tidy up and even make sure that the photographer’s coffee is warm.

So the next day during the shoot I applied everything that I had learned the night before and kept my eyes and ears open to absorb all the things that were going on around me. And I had the time of my life! And while having fun I learned so much!

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How To Start From Scratch Without Dying In The Attempt

So there I was, finally in London, with a bag full of dreams and a new life waiting to be lived. Now I just needed to figure out how to start a photographer career and make it in this new city. Being the control freak that I am and having this project management background I divised a one year roadmap for my new path and at the end of the timeline I wrote “start getting paid clients”. So I had a medium term goal and it was just a matter of finding out what the tasks to get there were. I spent hours and days and weeks googling the lives of all the photographers that I admired and whom I felt were living the life that I wanted. I wanted to know how they started out, who they worked with, who were their sponsors, what were their career breakthroughs, in summary, I wanted to find out what were the steps to follow to get where I wanted to be.

One of the conclussions from my research was that most of them started out by assisting other photographers. So I contacted two photographers that I met the year before during my short stay in town and asked them if I could come to one of their shoots and assist them. It was good timing because they had an upcoming shoot but they already had the whole crew, so instead they invited me to come along and take some behind the scenes shots for them. It was my first time on the set of an actual shoot so apart from taking the behind the scenes photos I was absorbing everything that was going on around me. I paid attention to every single detail and tried to learn as much as I could from everyone there: from the makeup artist to the models. Every single member of the crew seemed to have an important role and if I wanted to direct my own shoots one day I needed to know what everyone’s responsibilites were.

Things I learned that day:

1. what it means to organise a photoshoot (crew, location, models, styling, equipment, etc).

2. the roles of the crew members

3. how long a shoot takes and how to schedule each part of the shoot

4. bring refreshments: a fed crew is a happy crew.

5. the importance of assisting

6. how to direct models

7. Where to find crew members online

This was such an unbelievable learning experience for me and it definitely helped me realise what my next step needed to be. I needed to assist a photographer.

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To New Beginnings

After spending a few months in London at the beginning of 2013, I was back in Barcelona for the third time in less than two years. But this time everything was different. I knew who I was, I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I knew where I wanted to live. And like I have said many times before: now I just needed a plan.

I looked for a job in my previous industry because I needed a good steady income for a few months until I could save enough money for the new adventure. Meanwhile, my husband was working day and night to finish his current projects. We both started applying to jobs in the UK so we could go there with some sort of stability. And in less than 6 months he had a call, an interview, a contract and a plane ticket to our new destination. I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel!

Looking back I have to admit that we had moved so much from one country to another during those years that I just didn’t know if we had made the right choice. I had a dream, he had a need for a different work culture and we both wanted to leave Barcelona. But even though I was under the spell of the London I saw during those months that I spent here, I still had my doubts…

Now I can say that moving to London was one of the best decissions of our lives.

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London Calling

The decission was made: I needed to leave town if I wanted to pursue a photography career. But where to? At that point in my life I was working hard on building my portfolio and I was spending every cent of my part-time job salary on buying the appropiate equipment and props. My husband had recently started freelancing after many years of working for others and the economic recession in the Mediterranean was not painting a promising future for us. We knew that we had to leave but we just didn’t know where to go.

We spent many months researching cities, speaking to friends who lived abroad and even travelling to a few of those cities to experience them first hand but we couldn’t find one that we both liked. I wanted to move to Canada, I have this secret obsession with everything canadian. But he wanted to try Sweden or Australia. So to make it easier we narrowed our search down to cities in countries where we were allowed to work and where a language that we knew was spoken. This left us with very few options to choose from but none of them seemed enticing at the time.

Then my brother-in-law found a job in London and I thought that maybe this city could be a good idea. We both knew it, we both spoke the language, we both were allowed to work in the UK and most importantly a family member was going to be living there. So I quit my part-time job and came for three months to London to experience the city to its fullest and to see if we could make it here. And I fell in love with it. All those years back in Barcelona trying so hard to get in touch with fellow creatives and trying to network with people in the industry to no avail… and I came to London and in less than three months I met so many creatives, I discovered so many opportunities and I even met and chat with one of my idols: Juergen Teller.

This was London calling.

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If The Mountain Won’t Come To You, You Must Go To The Mountain.

While I was building my portfolio back in Barcelona, I started looking for other creatives with whom to collaborate and from whom to learn from. I enrolled in many studio photography courses and met a lot of starting photographers like myself. Unfortunately, the people that I met, albeit nice and friendly, were not as interested in photography as a profession as I was. Either because they were hobbyists or because the economical recession forced them to reprioritize their lives and search for a more reliable source of income. Either way, I spent months looking for people as hungry for a creative career as I was but I just couldn’t find any. I am not saying that they didn’t exist; I just didn’t run into them.

So my next step was to start contacting actual professionals and offer my services as an assistant, as a runner, as an intern or as whichever position they wanted to offer me. I contacted photographers, studios, magazines, creative directors, brands… no luck whatsoever. My emails weren’t getting through and I didn’t know why. I suspected that maybe it was because my portfolio was very poor but in my defense I was just starting out and I was looking for experiences in the field and to learn from others to improve my skills.

Finally, after a year of trying to get a foot in the industry I figured that if the city was not going to give me any chances then I would have to go ahead and look for another city. The question was: where to?

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The Beauty In Knowing What You Want!

One of my first jobs as a photographer was to shoot a few beauty images for an e-commerce specialising in makeup products. I got this job from one of my dearest friends who was also going to be the model during the shoot. And I must admit that at first I was really scared. But they knew that I had been doing this for a very short time and somehow they trusted their images to me. And for that I am really grateful. That’s why I said “yes” the minute they offered and the weeks before the shoot I watched so many beauty shoot tutorials that my eyes would hurt.

The brief was simple: take a few images of the MUA (Make Up Artist) while she is prepping the model and then a few beauty shots of the model with a very clean and simple background. I spoke to the person in charge of the shoot and suggested a few ideas that I had in mind in terms of poses, styling and creative direction and they loved them. So we were all set to go!

They day of the shoot I walked in there like I knew what I was doing and acted my professional best. I felt great and I think it showed. Besides, I had interiorized that during the shoot I would be open and receptive, that I would listen to their suggestions and be willing to try things in different ways and just be patient and flexible. And the shoot was a success, at least for me, at so many levels. They seemed to like my work and ended up not only using it on their website but calling me again the following year to shoot their new campaign.

I had finally found out what I saw myself shooting professionally. Welcome to the beginning of the rest of my life!

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What Your Portfolio Says Of You…

When I finally realized that shooting people was what I really wanted to do, I also knew that the portfolio that I had been trying to build for a while had to change. I had a website with a weird mix of street, architecture, landscape, portraiture and food photography and the only message that I was sending about me was that I really didn’t know what I wanted to shoot.

I took on the sad task to edit myself and, let me tell you, it was one of the hardest things I have ever gone through. I loved every single piece of my work! Some of them because of the challenges I went through to achieve the photo, others because they meant something to me, a few because of the people or places in them….anyhow, they all needed to go. I knew that if I wanted to be known as a fashion photographer I was going to need to show that being one is what I did!

This left me with very few photos to show on my website but with an enormous desire to go out and shoot some more. So I contacted my friends who I knew were kin on posing for portraits and took photos of them all. And they seemed to like my work because some of them even repeated!

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Portraits: More Than Meets The Eye

On my journey as a creative I have tried many different forms of art and photography trying to find myself and figure out what is it that I wanted to express with my craft. And it wasn’t until I started photographing people that I realised that my passion was somewhere in there. My first professional portraits were of my family and friends, the same way that many other photographers started out their careers, I guess. But I soon found out that what attracted me to shoot those people were the stories behind their forced poses or the scary look in their eyes. I wanted to know more about them, or make up stories about them. I wanted them to be characters in the stories in my mind.

One of the many friends whom I photographed was my friend Jessica. She has always been one of my biggest supporters in my new path and I wanted to gift her with something made with my own hands, something that meant a lot to me. So what better gift than to take a portrait of her. Can you guess the theme?

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Food: Shoot It Or Eat It!

Back in Barcelona from France, I put all my efforts into making my dream of becoming a photographer true. As I said before, I still didn’t know what kind of photography I wanted to take professionally, so I had to try as many types as I could to be able to decide. First on my list: Food photography. My thought process was: if I love cooking it and I love eating it, then photographing it should be fun. How wrong was I?!

My first step was to go on YouTube and watch a million tutorials to learn the science behind food photography. That helped, but still I felt like I was missing out on something. So I contacted the photographer behind one of the food photography blogs that I followed (http://www.365mm.cat/en/) to see if he was willing to give me private lessons of the essentials of food photography. And he said yes!

His name is Martí Sans and from minute one I realised that his outgoing personality and his contagious optimism were surpassed only by his photography skills and his beautiful art. Martí was an aspiring baker who one day figured out that what he enjoyed the most was not baking but taking photos of what he baked. Like he puts it, he used to photograph what he cooked, now he cooks what he photographs. He started taking photos of what he baked at school and now he works on campaigns for big food brands, takes his food photography workshops throughtout the country and runs a succesful photography business.

After learning the basics of food photography during our private lesson, I attended his workshops to learn more about the craft. Food photography is about making the dishes look like they are your very last meal. Even if for that purpose you need to stuff the food with glue, plastic, varnish, hairspray or paint! I soon realised that it just wasn’t for me. Being a control freak, this kind of photography sounds like it would be perfect because everything you see on the photo is controlled to the minimum detail. But it also requires being extremely patient, paying attention to details and having a good eye for composition and for making the dishes look like edible pieces of art… when they are actually everything but edible! Besides, I am a people person and it kinda felt very lonely in there just you and your subject.

I leave this type of photography to the masters like Martí.

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The Importance Of Crediting Others

There is an interesting phenomenon that I have noticed throughout these years and I haven’t been able to figure out if it’s forgetfullness or just good old selfishness: people don’t credit you when they post your photos online. I have seen my photos in many social media profiles posted by models, makeup artists, stylists or other creatives that I have collaborated with and some of them just never credit me or any of the other persons involved in the making of that photo. To me, that’s just plain rude. I feel like they are telling me that they don’t care about others, they just care about their own craft and not about the people around them who help them develop their creative careers.

I find that crediting others on the photos is crucial not only as a way of acknowledging the hardwork of others but also as a mean of promoting your peers. I credit every single person involved in the making of a photo on my social media, on my website and even on the publications I submit my work to because I know that one day someone is going to look at those photos and say “I want to work with whomever did that makeup” or “who is that model?” and just by going to the credits they can find out. So the same goes for when someone sees my photos in someone else’s website and wonders “who took that photo?”

We are all in this together and the only way to succeed is by supporting each other. Writing down the names of the people that you have collaborated with takes seconds but the reward lasts forever. If people are happy with you they will want to work with you again in the future. It’s that simple.

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Why The Name Grey Pistachio?

I get asked this question quite often. Some people think that it is a type of nut; others, that it is just an odd combination of words that work together. And some even think that my first name is Grey and that my last name is Pistachio. No matter what idea they get from it, they seem to be able to easily remember it. And that is what I really care about. For me, a brand should be like the fingerprint of a business: It should identify only one business, your business. But it must also be easy to remember, otherwise people will never be able to come back to you again.

When I decided to create an identity for my portfolio I knew that I couldn’t use my name as my brand. My name seems to be only easy to remember to Spanish speaking people and my last name always causes confusion, no matter which language you speak. So I couldn’t risk going around trying to promote a brand that was hard to remember.

After weeks of brainstorming, my husband and I came up with a list of possible brand names. Some involving my initials, others using the word photography in it and a few with things or concepts that meant something to me. But from all of them this one stood out and I just fell in love with it right away! Why “Grey Pistachio”, then? Well, Grey is an important colour in photography. It is used to calculate the correct exposure for a given shot. And Pistachio has always been my favourite nut.

The next step was creating the logo and the whole identity for the brand. For this I contacted one of my best friends, Mar De Ycaza, who is a very talented graphic designer. She created my beautiful logo, my brand identity and also my business cards which always seem to make a great impression.

So, there you go, that’s where the name comes from!

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The Type Of Photographer That I Wanted To Be

When you are starting your career as a photographer, figuring out what kind of photography you want to do is probably one of the hardest decisions to make. There are so many different categories! And most of the times the type of photography you enjoy is not necessarily the one you end up working in. When I finally made the decision to become a photographer I really had no idea of the kind of photography I wanted to take. I had been taking travel, street, architectural and landscape photography for years but I never saw any of those as possible career paths for me. It seems as if it would have been easy deciding what to do since at least I knew what I didn’t want to do. Wrong. Photography is such a versatile career that the possibilities are endless.

In order to make it easier for me to pick, I decided to make a list of all the types of photography I could think of and then group them into very generic categories:

- Nature: wildlife, landscape - photos you would see on National Geographic.
- Travel: photos you would see on travel guides.
- Street: photos taken in public spaces mostly as a study of the human condition.
- Photojournalism: news, documentaries - photos you would see on newspapers.
- Corporate: portraiture, PR - photos you would see on corporate documents, websites and newsletters.
- Events: parties, celebrities, red carpet, live performances, graduations.
- Wedding: no need to explain.
- Retail: family, babies, pets, portraits.
- Sports: photos you would see on newspapers or sports publications.
- Architectural: photos used by architects firms or the ones you would see on Architectural Digest.
- Stock: photography produced to license for others to use and reuse.
- Food: photos you would see on restaurant menus or food magazines.
- Fine Art: photos you would see on galleries.
- Commercial: product, advertisement - photos you would see on campaigns, catalogues or ads.
- Fashion: photos you would find on lookbooks or fashion magazines.
- Specialty: scientific, archival.
- Other: glamour, porn, paparazzi.

Making this list and grouping all these types of photography into very generic groups made it easier for me to know which ones I would like to try and which ones I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing. Since I had already tried Architecture, Street, Nature and Travel, I narrowed down the list to Portraiture (Corporate and Retail), Food, Commercial and Fashion. Now, it was a matter of just trying out each type and deciding on one. Of course, I could have chosen all the types of photography that I wanted because one type doesn’t exclude the others and there are many of them that are related or that require similar skills. But trying to be a Wedding / Sports / Food / Fashion Photographer would have only made me a Jack of all trades, master of none…

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