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Angel Eduardo
@angel.ehb
Photographer based in Switzerland
When I was a teenager, I had seen a photo of the Eiffel tower that caught my attention. It had fascinated me; visiting that place became a dream that I wanted to realize. At that time, I had no idea what this dream would bring me and how it would change my life. Five years ago I had the opportunity to leave Costa Rica for the first time and I was fortunate enough to travel to Europe. Preparing for my first big trip carefully – already a month before -, I put all necessary things in my suitcase, including a camera that I didn’t know how to operate. I remember it was a Pentax K-x, second hand, with a 18-55 lens. Two weeks before I started thinking that I should know at least a little about how to use the camera, so I unpacked the camera and started to watch tutorials and read about photography. To be honest, during the travel I safely kept shooting in automatic mode. It was only after the trip that I remembered that photo of the Eiffel Tower and how much impact it had had on me when I saw it. From that moment on I decided that I wanted to put into practice everything that I had been learning so far.
"Most importantly, I wanted to improve in order to be able to create these kind of photos that would have an impact on others when looking at them and inspire them to travel just like that one photo had inspired me."
I have always loved to challenge myself, putting myself out of my comfort zone and do new things. Travel is exactly that, especially my first travel; being in places far away from home where they speak languages I couldn’t understand. I think that many times as human beings, we fall into a routine almost impossible to break, that routine becomes toxic and makes us believe that we are 100% well. In my case, this first trip showed me how deeply I was stuck in my routine.
"To get out of it, I really had to try my best and confront myself."
Often these moments that you get out of your comfort zone are most impactful and influential. Very often in a positive sense, manifesting change. Travel for me means an adrenaline of feelings and emotions which with my camera I want to capture and portray to remember that they were there. But also in everyday life, out of a sudden, there can be moments that inspire you and influence your life. For example that day that I saw the photo of the Eiffel Tower. Visualization helps us to realize things and in that sense, I was unconsciously inspired by a friend of mine from Costa Rica. Whenever we passed by the airport in our city, he would say out loud: “In a few months I will be traveling with one of those planes, to a new destination” after which I kept quiet and repeated to those few words in my mind, that in the end influenced my way of thinking and contributed a lot to a complete breakdown of my routine.
"And thanks to the radical modification of my routine and thinking pattern, I got to travel and also, I got to know the woman who is now my wife."
She is a source of inspiration for many of my travels and photos I have been able to make. Thanks to her, I am living in beautiful Switzerland. She supports my dreams, my hobbies and helps me to always move forward and ameliorate in any aspect of my life. Personally, I think that whatever path we are on, whatever goal or dream we want to achieve, we always ‘need’ a trigger or the help of others. A single word can push us from the path that prevent us from starting or achieving those dreams that are so desired, to the path that directs us to accomplishing these very same dreams and desires.
"For now, I haven’t found a job yet in Switzerland and I take advantage of the situation to focus on learning the language as intensively as possible. So photography, at this stage of my life, has become that moment of liberation in which I can take my camera and escape from the four walls of my home and study books."
The beginning of a life in another country is not easy at all, but thanks to photography and the people around me I have been able to overcome this new challenge. Meanwhile I switched from the automatic mode to manual and photography has transformed from a hobby into a passion I want to dominate completely. Photography makes my life more interesting, it forces me to see and hear many of those little details that surround me to which I unfortunately never paid attention to before. At the moment I see a wonderful view and I have the camera in my hand or on the tripod, I think about how lucky I am to have this knowledge with me to capture it and how happy it makes me to be able to share these moments of happiness with other people.
Sometimes I look at my old photos and I see how much I have advanced. They represent the learning path that has led me to where I am right now. My wife often tells me and insists that my photos could be somewhere else and not just stored on my computer or on my hard drive and I think that she is right. I want to do something completely different with them, showcase them and hopefully inspire people. Bring my photos to people that perhaps can’t travel that much but I can show the world to and get them dreaming with my photos. That inspires me to continue improving my editing techniques day by day, as well as photographic composition techniques.
"It is interesting to see how one photograph inspired me to travel, and how my own photography and the learning process inspires me to continue traveling and discover places."
In the beginning I didn’t advance that well, mainly because I limited myself. As many starters, I was comparing my work with others and seeing so many better photos than mine made me feel sad. I often would think that it wasn’t just because of a lack of knowledge, but because I just wasn’t made for this type of photography. This was enforced when social media boomed and the number of likes became a measurement of success and of how inspirational someone’s work was. I tried to stop giving much importance to this aspect by thinking about what I really wanted for my photos; and that was rather having a few exposed in a frame on a wall than on the Instagram feed with hundreds of likes. What helped me a lot was watching inspirational videos; I remember watching one video from Darren Jew for Canon that specifically helped me to relax and forget about the frustration I felt, generated by the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be as a photographer.
"There is still a lot to learn, but I feel good where I am now because I know I am on the right path, moving forward to create better results every day."
We all know that in photography, there’s always something to learn and room for improvement. Personally I am focussing now on ameliorating my compositions as well as finding the ideal colors for scene. I would like to get to this moment that my photograph that simply shows a beautiful place, converts into a photograph that evokes emotions and makes you stop and stare for a few seconds to look better at it. Living in a country like Switzerland has provided me with a huge advantage talking about photography, having many different places to discover and capture and so giving me unlimited options to practice.
"At some point, I would love to go back to Costa Rica and capture my country in the way that I am able to do now, balancing the colors and choosing better compositions."
"Black & white photography is also something I would like to delve into much more. This type of photography has always attracted me and I find it amazing how much such photo can convey just using black and white."
The ultimate goal for me would be to be able to transmit with a photo not just a beautiful landscape but also emotions, using both color and just black and white, still realizing this emotional impact. I love using and maintaining the colors of a scene, keeping it alive. I know that moody tones are quite popular right now, but I feel like I have to sacrifice the beauty of a lively scene to achieve a moody atmosphere. But in that sense, everyone has a personal preference and I believe that personality is what is so important in photography. It gives your photo a unique identity and that is why the most famous photographers have become famous: Their artistic identity.
"I would love my photos to be hanging on a wall in a room of a house and to be the subject of a conversation."
That the people watching the photo can visualize being in the place and the moment, feel the emotion, imagine the story. This is not easy to achieve, but I am working on it every day. In the end, I want my photos to be recognizable, that they are easily accessible for people and that those who are looking at my photos identify the style and know it was me who took the photograph. Fortunately there is my family, my wife and even unknown persons that inspire me, advice me and help me to keep growing. However, I believe that the most important person in my live to keep growing personally and professionally is me myself. I have collected the experiences, the creativity, the learning process, the feedback and advices. In life everything happens for a reason, whether you perceive it as good or bad, it had to happen. Now I have a box full of tools and insights. But if I don’t do anything with it, these valuable items become useless.
"I am the one to create something amazing with all that was and will be provided to me. To create art, and to create life."
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