Welcome to my blog for United Earth Photography! What is this blog? Who is this blog for? What’s my purpose as a photographer?
For those who want to know me better, allow me to describe my journey into Photography, and the higher purpose I seek when picking up my cameras and spending hours or days chasing an image…
How my journey started
My photography journey was launched by 2 childhood events. The first one was the importance my family, in particular my father, my grand-father, and my cousin, crafting images capturing family moments. They introduced me to the art of photography, the amazing machines these reflex cameras were, and the endless creativity they offer. As a teenager in the 90s, I got my first real camera: a Nikon reflex. The second event was when that curiosity collided with my love for Nature and hiking. As a teenager, a hike through Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean sea.
It was the first time I brought with me a reflex camera to a hike.
Its stunning landscapes, and the beauty of the pictures I brought back, from mountain silhouettes to seagulls, from Mediterranean sunsets, to perched villages made me realize how important photography was for me, in particular to retain the memory of the most beautiful places I had been to.
The next major step in my photography journey took place when I moved to the United States in 2005, to take a research position at the University of Texas. I moved to Austin with the firm intention to explore that city and the western US since I didn’t expect to settle here. Around the same time, I decided to add a small Sony “digital point and shoot” camera to my arsenal to easily send pictures back home to my family. When that camera broke, I ended up replacing it with my first digital reflex. All of a sudden, the best of both worlds was available to me. That accelerated my learning curve because making my reflex camera digital reduced the feedback loop for my creative choices from weeks to seconds. I started really understanding the basic photography concepts: depth of field, exposure, … At the same time, one of my best friends in Austin was a professional photographer, specializing in travel and portrait photography, something that resonated so much with my love of traveling the world. I started reading everything I could about photography and learning everything about my Canon 30D and the basic lenses I could afford.
Growing as a photographer
The following decade will bring so much in my life, but one of the major steps in my photography journey was my honeymoon trip to the Peruvian Andes. Traveling the world was already one of the greatest passions for my wife and I, and my camera allowed me to capture the magical beauty and simplicity of a country so unique in the world. A picture in particular stuck with me and triggered my decision to become a “real” photographer: the lucky capture of an old shepherd woman with her herd in front of the Peruvian Andes:
I started carrying my camera around everywhere I went, including during trips to the Rio Grande Valley where some of our family resides. There, a wonderful family friend introduced me to bird photography and even lent me his “pro” lens for a family trip to Costa Rica. Talk about paradise and Nature’s kingdom…
My first purpose for creating UEP
Fast forward another 10 years, I am now the father of a really special girl whose planet I worry about. In the meanwhile, I made a life in the US, with deep friendships. Some of the most meaningful ones lead me to want to do whatever I can to encourage people to (re)connect with Nature. For too many of us, that connection isn’t given enough time and attention in our westerner, rational, and busy lives. That’s it! This was the superior goal I wanted my eye and camera to work for:
I want to help all of us (re)connect to our Mother Nature deeply enough to experience and want to protect its beauty, its strength, and its fragility.
But how to foster that connection?
Encounters and inspirations
Around the same time, my work was regularly taking me through the Denver International Airport, where I stumbled onto the gallery of legendary Wildlife Photographer Tom Mangelsen. Tom has been capturing incredible images of wildlife in the US and around the world for 40 years, showing emotional or powerful moments of the life of the wildest animals on this planet. He also became an ambassador for protecting our planet and the life it carries. This is the first reason I decided to invest all my free time into becoming the best photographer I could be, and bring along as many people as possible. I am still pursuing this in all aspects of my photography, from trying to capture the beauty of some of the wildest animals in the US to commercial projects to promote Nature parks in Texas. I plan to do so for the rest of my life.
One of the sources for my growth as a photographer is the ever expanding number of photographers I admire, follow and get inspired by. One of them, Tommy Nguyen (pronounced “Tommy When”) who I was following became my mentor, and has boosted my learning journey beyond my wildest hopes. He too has changed my life and my art forever thanks to all he knows, but most importantly to his generosity and willingness to share. He, and so many amazing photographers around him, have become life-long friends, and are my continued inspiration, my learning buddies and my support system. They too are wildlife photographers, but are also landscape photographers, portrait masters, flower photographers, … Checkout their galleries here!
My second purpose for UEP
And that brings me to the second deep purpose I have when I capture images. As much as we need to foster our connection to Nature, we need to equally foster our connection to each other. And that connection can be powerfully experienced when traveling and meeting others and other ways of life. Whether we travel around the block or around the planet is secondary. That is the second passion I have for photography: travel and portrait photography. I love to meet new people, and I love to catch the essence of these people through portraits. I am looking to create real portraits that show one’s true self, one’s soul. I am all the people whose path I have crossed. They are my blood, they are smart Mexican women, they are Italian violonists, French painters, Mexican artists, European olive oil makers, American scientists, young and smart girls, Tanzanian nurses, Vietnamese family men, Peruvian shepherds, Bulgarian immigrants, kind Vietnamese boys, Indian programmers, retired Texan university professors, English photographers, Taiwanese public servants, …
They are one. I am them. We are united.