When JC Spoke To HUF [Print]

"Like Diane Arbus famously said: 'I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.' And I would add that if I didn’t take photos there would be stories in my head that would never come to life." Grab issue 59 of HUF Magazine where I am featured in the creative profiling section along other creatives worth keeping an eye on. HUF's Editorial Manager Kurt Roth and I spoke about where I find inspiration, about my ambitions and about what makes a perfect image. You can buy the magazine here.

HUF Magazine is the creative magazine for the creative mind. Exclusive interviews with creative individuals around the world. Creativity is our core. Featuring the very best in talent and skill. Exploring the creative minds of actors, artists, designers, models, photographers, stylists, writers…and much much more. It’s a gateway for creatives, who deserve recognition of their work, whether they are amateur, student, semi-professional or professional.

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When JC Spoke To Rion [Print]

"These days, literally anyone can take a photo, but not everyone can be a photographer. Being a photographer requires a set of skills that are very underrated. We are business people, we are artists, we are project managers, we are producers, we are re-touchers... and sometimes we are even psychologists! Our eyes are trained to see beauty, even in the oddest of places and with the click of a button we have the ability to freeze time. How’s that for a super power?" Grab a copy of this month's issue of Rion Magazine where I was interviewed by Editor-in-Chief Wayne Noir.

RION Magazine is a London based bi-annual fashion magazine featuring the very best in creative talent and emerging creatives.

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When JC Spoke To Ilise [Podcast]

A couple of weeks ago I took part on Ilise Benun's podcast series "Experienced Newbies" where we had a very interesting conversation on career changes as an adult. We spoke about what it feels like when you start from scratch around your 40's, on how to take advantage and transfer skills from your previous industry and we came up with some good advices for starting creatives. Listen to the full podcast here.

Ilise Benun is a Business Expert for Creative Professionals and the author of 7 business books for the “creatively self-employed,” as well as a national speaker and founder of Marketing-Mentor.com. During her 25+ years in business, she has developed and delivered programming for creative professionals, notably as co-founder/host of the Creative Business / Design Entrepreneurship program of HOW Design Live and via her popular online course for CreativeLive.com, "Command the Fees You Deserve."

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This Is The Time To Create

We are at our most creative when we experience very happy or very disturbing events. We get inspired by love, by joy, by our achievements… but we also get inspired by pain, by suffering, by the struggle… Intense emotions spark our inner muse, and we have no choice but to materialise what we are going through in the form of whichever medium we work with. We are sometimes the victims, other times the witnesses, but we are always the storytellers. So in times like the ones we are living, it is our duty as creatives to spread the word on the issues that affect our community, our country or the human race.

Fashion week this season has been accused of getting too political and has been under fire for supposedly trying to profit from anti-Trumpism. But, whoever is making these accusations is missing the point: being pro-equality, pro-diversity, pro-peace does not automatically make you anti-anyone. This cause is not about the Musevenis, the Farages, or the Trumps. This cause is bigger than all of us; it’s about 7 billion people sharing a planet. It’s about being pro-humanity.

So it is only reasonable that Fashion Design, like any other creative endeavour, uses the channels at its disposal to express concern for what our society is turning into. Because it is in times like these that we creatives must create. It is our calling and our duty to protest, to educate and to give voice to those who are not allowed to have one. So for me, that is not being “too political”. That is just being a good human being.

Photo credit: Rein presentation during London Fashion Week.

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See You At LFW AW17

London Fashion Week is around the corner and this year you will find me shooting the runway for Hellavagirl Couture and taking over Rion Magazine's Instagram account to bring you the looks in the shows, the showrooms and the streets throughout the whole event. So go give them both a follow on Instagram to stay up to date with everything fashion!

Helen Woollams founded Hellavagirl in 2011 and was awarded Britain's Top Designer 2016 for her innovative and creative design process, often cutting straight into cloth. Each piece is individually produced and hand finished in their UK based studio. Hellavagirl creates Couture collections twice a year as well as a Ready-To-Wear line and a bespoke dress service. 

RION Magazine is a London based bi-annual fashion magazine featuring the very best in creative talent and emerging creatives.

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On Being A Professional Photographer

A few days ago someone asked me what did I think takes for someone to make it as a professional photographer, especially nowadays when literally anyone with a smartphone is able to take pretty decent photos. And to me, the first misconception that every non-photographer has is trying to equate the craft of photography to the business of photography. You can take very good photos without understanding how photography works, but you can't make it as a professional photographer if you don't understand the business.

Uncle Pete might shoot the most beautiful photos during someone's wedding, or co-worker Martha might capture someone else's real essence with her smartphone for their LinkedIn profile, sometimes they might even know how to retouch them themselves for that extra kick and someone might even argue that they do a better job than most professional photographers out there. But the keywords here are the "might" and the "sometimes" because being a professional photographer means that what you deliver has to be consistent with what your client needs, it means that the client can rely that you are not only going to be on time and deliver on time but that you are also going to in fact deliver, it means that every time that they hire you they will get the same quality and reliability that they got before.

Being a professional photographer means that the days that you are not photographing for your clients you are either meeting with clients or looking for new clients, or working on personal projects, or working on your self-promotion, or working on your accounting, or working on other administrative tasks. Professional photography means having to get and take care of photography equipment, computer, external drives, backup servers, website, domain name, business email, insurance... and the list goes on.

Working as a professional photographer means dealing with people, because people are at the core of the business in the form of clients, subjects or peers, and if this fact is ever ignored then the business is doomed to fail. Being a professional photographer means that we don't sell photos, we sell expertise, we sell solutions, we sell the ability to awaken emotions, we sell the feeling that someone gets when they see themselves or their products in images, we don't sell just a digital file or a printed piece of paper.

And finally, to finish answering the question I think that to make it as a professional photographer you have to understand that it is a job, and like with any other job you should get paid for it to cover your expenses and hopefully earn some money. Because professional photography is a career, it's a long-term endeavour to fulfil your passion.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrzej Gruszka

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5 Minutes With JC

A couple of weeks ago, the people from #Photography Magazine asked me if they could interview me for their website on my career and my "Brexiters" project. The interviewer was the lovely Lisa Gillies who had some really interesting questions about my motivations for the project and the whole process that I went through in the creation of the series. One more time I want to thank Daisy and Genea for all their support and for featuring my photography project in their Europe Edition.

You can read the full interview by following this link.

Photo credit: Dan Clarke.

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#Photography Takeover

This week I'm taking over #Photography Magazine's social media to talk about my "Brexiters" photography project. "Brexiters" is a personal project where I explore the image that British people have of those who voted in favour of leaving the EU during the referendum. The sitters were asked to impersonate someone who they thought voted pro-Brexit. I was not interested in their actual political views. I was just interested in the image that British people had of this voter: how would they dress, how would they behave, how would they look at me while I was taking their photo. I specified in the ad that it didn't have to be a stereotyped profile; I just wanted to see their interpretation of this voter and see if it matched the description that the media was portraying.

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The Societies Photographic Convention 2017

Last week, the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP) held its annual convention packed with educational programs and a representation from the big names in the photographic industry eager to show the latest in technology and design. As a member of the SWPP, I never miss the opportunity to come to this gathering and if you are a photographer who's serious about their craft you mustn't miss it either.

This year I particularly enjoyed The Flash Centre's stand, which featured photographer and retoucher Glyn Dewis, the backgrounds tutorial by The Photographer Academy, the motivational Blogging for Photographers talk by Donal Doherty from Engage, all the seminars on retouching and composites from Adobe (a big shout-out to Richard Curtis for putting together such interesting seminars) and the really inspiring tote bags from the guys at Folio Albums.

The SWPP is one of the strongest photographic organizations in the UK aimed at servicing the needs of professional photographers, whether in full or part-time occupations. The SWPP currently represents photographers who specialize in the following areas of expertise: photojournalists, weddings, portraits, children, animal, equestrian, digital, commercial, fashion, glamour, landscape, nature, sport, medical, scientific, press, PR, architectural, industrial, forensic, natural history, research, amongst others.

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Happy Is The New Beautiful

Throughout 2016 I worked really hard to make my portfolio more diverse and to try to do my part in making this Industry more fair.  I've worked with people from different genders, different ethnicities, different ages, different origins... But one thing I haven't done yet is work with people with different body types. And it might not be entirely my fault as most of the times I have no control over the castings but I feel like I must do something about it. Isn't it about time we stopped believing that beautiful only means skinny?

Alexandra Shulman, the editor-in-chief of British Vogue, wrote on her editor's letter for the December 2016 issue of the magazine how hard it was to get clothes for the cover's model Ashley Graham. Apparently, none of the designers that usually work with the magazine wanted to dress her because she doesn't fit the impossibly skinny sample sizes that these brands make. And like Mrs. Shulman, I too believe that the we are at a historical moment in fashion where the Industry is craving diversity from within. So how narrow-minded and retrogade can a brand be to not be able to realize that people, not only from the inside but also from the outside of the Industry (customers), want diversity? People want to relate, they don't want to feel ashamed anymore for not being white enough, or tall enough, or skinny enough; they want to get inspired by brands and their ethos and feel like the brands are talking to them, not looking down on them.

Beautiful means "pleasing to the senses". It doesn't mean "this" size or "this" colour or "this birthplace". It means that I see someone or something and I like them. And I see Ashley Graham and I feel like she is such an amazingly gorgeous woman that I would give anything to be able to photograph her and I just can't understand why a designer would not want to dress her?! And it's not only about women. Men are also prey to this nonsense. Beautiful guys from all backgrounds and sizes pass in front of my lens every week and they tell me about the things that agencies or clients tell them about their bodies and how they are constantly shamed into eating less and working out more or lie about their age and height and all I can think is "Why??? Is it even possible to make them more perfect?!".

And I'm not saying that I don't support a healthy lifestyle. We should all take care of ourselves. But I do believe that you can be healthy regardless of your size. You can most certainly be naturally skinny and healthy, but that doesn't mean that you can't be a bigger size and healthy as well. And that's the keyword: healthy. And not only physically, but also mentally. There is nothing more beatiful than someone with a healthy self-esteem. Happy is the new beautiful.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrew Clark.

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I Am Looking For A Few Good People

People. We are born from people, we are brought up by people, we fall in love and we make families with people; we work for people and with people, people make us smile, they make us cry; what we eat, what we wear, where we live has been made by people... if people seem to play such an important role in our lives, why is it that we tend to value more the material things over our fellow human beings?

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to include in your resolutions for this new year that you will try to be good to others, not only in 2017, but for the remaining of your life. Because this last year got the worst of us and we won't survive long as a species if we don't start coming together. The future of the human race is in our hands and we can still do something to be remembered as the generation that brought communities together instead of the generation that lost hope and that let extremists get away with imposing hatred and fear.

One of Tiffany & Co.'s most beautiful advertisement campaigns states that "In this new year someone will fall in love, someone will have cake with candles, someone will move away, someone will come home, someone will finally graduate, someone will get a job, someone will be born, someone will propose to someone..." but I feel like it's missing that "in this new year someone will try to be a better person." I know I will. My wish is that you do too. Happy 2017.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrew Clark.

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This New Year...

This New Year let's LOVE more and hate LESS, let's embrace what makes us different, UNIQUE, and STOP discriminating gender, race, colour, size, age, sexual orientation... after all, we are all HUMANS, different but the SAME. Happy 2017

xx JC

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You Are Your Greatest Creation

If you feel like you need a reason to be happy, stop what you are doing for a second and take a look in the mirror. That is you. That beautiful being that you are staring at is you. All the choices in your life have shaped the person that is staring back at you from your reflection. And that person, you, is your greatest creation. Your perfect creation. With your virtues and your flaws, you are perfect. And you don't need me or anyone else to tell you this because you already know it. You just need to believe it. And when you finally believe it you will realize that you have many reasons to be happy. Despite all the things that go on around you, the good and the evil, you have managed to keep on going and to get here, right now, to this very moment when you are reflecting on your life and on everything that you have accomplished. So be grateful for what you have, let go of what holds you back and smile. And share that smile with others. Let happiness be the greatest gift that we give during these holidays.

Happy Holidays 2016.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrzej Gruszka.

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Counting Heart-Throbs

By this time of the year I get very introspective and reflect on my life over the previous 12 months. Like Socrates allegedly said: "the unexamined life is not worth living". So I think about my accomplishments and my failures, about the things that I should keep on doing and the things that I should correct; about the lessons learnt and how to live by them; I think about those whom I have loved so that I can love them more, about those whom I have hurt so that I can ask for their forgiveness, about those who have hurt me so that I can forgive them...

I also think about the people whose lives I have touched with my photography, not only those who have worked or collaborated with me, but also those who have been in front of my camera posing for me. The satisfaction that they get when they see their image on the screen is worth more to me than all the money in the world and I have to say that these last 3 years I have been be able to make a lot of people happy. And that makes me happy.  And I know that to be able to say that one is happy despite all the events that took place in 2016 makes me a very lucky bastard.

Some time ago I read a fragment of a poem called “Festus” by Philip James Bailey:

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most—feels the noblest—acts the best."

I like to think that I live my life by how much I make other people's hearts throb.

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Aspiring Models: Beware Of Fake Model Agencies

In the last couple of weeks I have gotten many calls from aspiring models who have been approached by fake model agencies promising them jobs with top clients and earnings of thousands of pounds a day provided that they came to their offices for a test photoshoot for which they had to pay a refundable deposit. These are not real model agencies, these are just scammers who are trying to take advantage of the hopes and dreams of vulnerable people who know nothing about the modelling industry and who would do anything to work as a model. Keep on reading for tips on how to recognize them and not fall prey to their reprehensible techniques.

The modelling industry is a really tough industry to work in. You are being constantly judged by things that are completely out of your control. Rejection becomes the new normal. It's nothing personal, it doesn't have anything to do with whether you are pretty or not, or whether you have the body shape, or the height or the origin. It has more to do with the trends of each market and what the clients are looking for at the moment. There is nothing wrong in trying to make it as a freelance model and probably by doing so it would get you a constant stream of jobs even if they are lower paid, but the dream is to be signed to an agency that gets you the jobs that pay the big bucks. The problem is that agencies respond to clients expectations and they only sign models who they can make money of. So if this season no one is casting redheads in London and you are an aspiring redhead model, the likeliness of getting signed by an agency in London this season is very low. If you wanted to get signed you would have to consider other markets. And it is precisely those moments in the aspiring model's life that the fake model agencies target.

It is a sad reality of humans as a species that there will always be someone trying to take advantage of the most vulnerable. If they take advantage of me, a 40 something year old man, it doesn't make it better but at least I can excuse myself by saying that I've been caught off-guard, I should have known better, and this won't happen to me again. But it is disturbing that someone takes advantage of the dreams, expectations and innocence of young people. To me, that is unforgivable. These fake model agencies target young aspiring models who are desperately looking to be represented or models who are just starting out and have no idea of how the modelling world works. They contact them on social media or on the streets, tell them that they have what it takes to become a model and lure them into their studios with the promise that they would take their photos to start developing their portfolio and then send it out to the best agencies and the best clients in the country. The only condition is that the model pays a refundable deposit which they hardly get back and after the photoshoot finishes then they have to pay for the photos if they ever want to have them. And some of these fake agencies charge up to 2000 pounds for photos that once they are given to the model they are never sent to any agency or client and the model never hears from the fake agency again.

So, how to know when are you dealing with one of these scam agencies?

1. They don't call themselves an agency: if you talk to them or if you go on their website you will see that they usually don't call themselves an agency because they are not. They use words like "platform" or "advisor" or "coach" and they will tell you that they will provide advice and guidance to help you become a model and then put you in contact with "top agencies" or "affiliated agencies" or "top clients" to get you the jobs. Real agencies call themselves what they are, Modelling Agencies, and if you go into their websites you can see that they clearly say so.

2. They charge a deposit or a fee: real model agencies never charge you money when they book you. Whatever money they invest in your development they will take out of the payments that you receive from clients once you start making money with them.

3. They ask you to come in for a photoshoot and then charge you for the photos: real agencies develop your portfolio with a network of photographers that they work with and never charge you directly for the photos. As I said before, all the development costs come out of your first jobs.

If you feel like you have been approached by one of these scam agencies you can learn more about models rights and agencies duties on these links:

• British Fashion Council

• British Fashion Model Agency Association

Modeling is not for the faint of heart and there is no easy way to make it in the industry. You don't need an agent to work as a model but if you decide to look for one you should first do your research on what to expect from the agency and what the agencies expect of you.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrew Clark.

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2nd Blogiversary!

This month my blog turned 2 years old! Can you believe that? It feels like it was yesterday when I decided to start writing a recount of everything that I was going through when I decided to switch careers and become a photographer. 2 years... Don't they go by in a blink?

And to celebrate it I have put together a list of the most read posts of the last 24 months. Thank you so much to all my subscribers and to the people that read me every Wednesday!

Without your support this blog wouldn't exist.

And if you still haven't subscribed to my weekly updates, what are you waiting for?

Take The Blindfold Off

What If The Goal Is Becoming You?

The Man With A Plan

Brexiters

Show Up To Give

Your One Person Orchestra

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Are You The Hero Or The Villain?

I got my first office job back when I was 19 years old and in that company I met a very wise woman who taught me a valuable lesson on human interaction. She used to say that it really does not matter for how long you interact with someone, what is important is the depth of the connection that you have with them. Sometimes we meet people briefly but they stay in our minds for the rest of our lives; while with other people it takes years of interactions for them to grow on us. It is as if with some people their role in the movie of your life was to show up in just one scene, say just a few lines but somehow affect the rest of the plot. And if it's in a negative way they don't get a second chance to amend their contribution to your story. They only get one chance to be a hero or a villain.

The thing about the other people, those who appear regularly in your story, is that they have more time to develop the character that they are performing. They can start as heroes and become villains later on, or the other way around... or even shift continuously from one role to the other if they stay in your story long enough. While people who appear briefly in your movie get very limited time to change status. And then there is us, and of course we are always the hero in our own story. But what happens with heroes is that they can be the good person in your movie but they might be the villain in someone else's. It's all a matter of perspective.

My aim has always been to be one of the heroes, not only in my movie, but in the movie of every person that I interact with. I always try to have positive interactions with others and not only with the people that are close to me, but also with those people that I get to meet only for a few minutes or a few hours or a few days. Because I sincerely want other people to feel good around me and to remember me as the person who made them feel their best, no matter how brief the encounter was. Sadly, it can't happen all the time. Sometimes I am the villain. I don't think that I ever do it on purpose, and sometimes when it happens I am not even aware of it, but if I find out I do my best to amend my misbehavior. One thing is for sure, I never stop trying to be the best person that I can be.

Some people might like us, others might not, and that is just life. But we should never stop trying to be the best version of ourselves. The world is in need of good people now more than ever.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrew Clark.

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I Live In A Bubble

I live in a bubble. And in my bubble I surround myself with good people, with people who embrace diversity, with people who see others as brothers and sisters and not enemies, with people who are acceptant of differences and who know that love conquers all. In my bubbled world there is no room for misogyny, discrimination nor hatred, and by alienating those who engage in these practices I have in fact alienated myself from the real world. In my naive approach to life, all these things were things that were slowly becoming part of the past and new generations had learnt from the mistakes of the ones that came before them. But I was so wrong. There is still so much work to be done.

This year has proven me wrong at so many levels. But to be fair it hasn't all been my fault. It's true that if I filter my friends and peers and only engage with like-minded people I will undoubtedly end up living in a world of my own creation. But inputs from the outside world like news outlets, social media or the internet itself should have been enough to help me realize that things weren't going as good as I thought. The problem is that nowadays all those inputs from those sources have also been tailored to my likes and needs without me even noticing. So when I browse the web or spend time in social media, all those ads and posts that I see are shown to me by algorithms that have a very accurate profile of who I am. And in the end, the life that I thought that I was creating for myself had actually been customized for me. It's all an illusion.

If you open my Facebook feed or my Instagram or Twitter at any given time you will find posts that are pro-equality, anti-hatred, centre-left and global-minded. And it is not that I was so naive that I didn't know that discrimination still existed in the world but to me that was reserved to a very extreme but low percentage of the population. And for the longest time I didn't like it when people called immigrants, other races or LGBTQ people minorities because I thought that in this day and age the anti-diversity were the true minority. But it turns out that the real minority is the one formed by people who, like me, believe that no gender identity, no race, no sexual orientation and in fact no differentiating factor should be discriminated upon but embraced.

But I'm happy that my bubble burst because now I know that in order to make my world truly diverse I most also include those who think completely different from how I think in order to understand them and to learn why their fears make them hate others. And maybe one day I will be able to show them that those fears are self-created or induced by others who just want to control them and profit from their extreme feelings.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrzej Gruszka.

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Photomonth Exhibition

I am thrilled to announce that my 'Brexiters' project photos are being exhibited as part of the Photomonth East London International Photography Festival at Rich Mix Eastend in Bethnal Green from 10am to 10pm until 26 November 2016 with free access to the public.

'Brexiters' is a personal photography project where I explore the image that British people have of those who voted to leave the EU during the 2016 referendum. The sitters applied to an online ad where they were asked to impersonate someone who they thought had voted 'Leave'.

Interview with local newspaper

Projections

When you visit the exhibition, you will find some of my photos hanging on the wall while the rest are being projected on a big screen. Here is the address:

Rich Mix: 34-47 Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch, E1 6LA London

Can't wait to see you all there!

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In Business And In War

I read somewhere on social media today: "I make new enemies everyday, it's called business", and even if it's a quote from a movie I couldn't help but feel sorry for the person who posted it because they made it their own. Who wants to live a life surrounded by enemies? Who wants to be in constant fear of competitors and peers?

It's true that in business, like in war, the only way to win a battle (that is, to get the job) is to end it in your favor. But, unlike war, in business we loose the jobs most of the times for reasons that have nothing to do with the world trying to come out to get us. We loose jobs because we are not the right fit for the client or the jobs are not the right fit for us (expertise, budgets, timings). We don't loose jobs because our peers are running around with blood on their eyes taking the jobs by force out of the hands of our clients. And if that is the case, perhaps it's time to reconsider the type of clients that we are trying to approach.

So instead of focusing your business development strategy on what your competitors are doing or not doing, lets focus in ourselves and in trying to improve our offer to become the best possible fit for our clients. The success of your peers doesn't automatically make you unsuccessful. It just means that there is also a possibility for you to succeed.

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