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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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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