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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