How a hard drive failure changed the way I see and do my work.

File storage.

I know I’m guilty. I’ve been saving my files very irresponsibly for a photographer—One terabyte drive on my working machine and 3 terabytes of external backup. It may seem that this set up was plenty for the type of work I was getting but Oh Boy I was wrong. The story goes like this. I own a one terabyte iMac which needed desperately a hard drive update. The whole thing was full. I poorly could work Photoshop out of it and I needed a replacement fast.

My old set up
This was my set up for saving and archiving my files, 1 terabyte internal HD to save my RAW files (really) and 3 terabytes external to back up my computer. For me this was the perfect set up but then I started to shoot more and more and it got to the point where I needed to update.

The Problem
I moved all of my computer files to my trusted 3 years external HD (big mistake) at the time I didn’t really know that the lifespan of a hard drive is 2 to 3 years. Mine was due for disaster. After installing a fresh operating system copy and deleting my computers internal HD, the very next day my 3 terabyte back up dies. No previous warning. Now what?

The Solution… maybe.
I tried so many recovery softwares that took days to go over the 3 terabytes and gathered most of the files, YES… 90% of them were corrupted. Meaning I got garbage. Now what? I said, maybe this software is not the best approach for this particular case so I took the drive to a professional recovery company. After three days I got a call form the recovery company guy, Alex. “I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do. It seems that the drive was wiped clean” meaning reformatted. “There’s nothing we can do about it but you can get a recovery program to gather your files” …Yes he suggested the same program I previously used. At the end I lost a great deal of work, from my graphic design days to a few events and portrait shoots I did. Luckily I didn’t lose a pending wedding I had shot the week before. Everything was saved on an external HD I was testing at the time for onsite flash card dumping.

So tell me, have you ever lost a photo, a song on that old computer that made you cry “WHY?”

Comment and share if you dig it. 🙂

Drives and Software I’m using now
Elite Pro Qx2 (for my RAID system)
One OWC Mercury  Electra 3g SSDs 240 GB, for my internal (replacing the optical drive)
One OWC Mercury Electra 3g SSD 120 GB, as my working drive. with an external encase.
and finally a cloud folder in my FTP server.
All that automatically sync using GoodSync

My “OTHER” Homes

As general a rule, we creatives I tend to have many passions—cooking, teaching, designing… etc. This help us shape what we will be doing with our art in the future, it also creates a sort of art junk if you can call it like that.  We love to share our creations and while at it, help others if possible. Some of us have Youtube channels with tutorials, others create blogs like this one, or even podcasts.  At the end, we want you to be able to view all of this content that makes the internet so great but we don’t want to mix everything we do in one website, other wise it will look like a pile of mixed-color-dirty laundry. So we create  homes for each passion.

In my case, I’m a graphic/web designer by trade. I did design for around 8 years. In that period of time I created many  things related to design as well as an audio post cast that shows how depressed I was during my college years and how by just doing this radio show helped me get over my worries. From episode 1 all the way to the 16th you will see the tremendous difference in quality. Here you can have a listen—but you need to understand spanish… sorry Bitacora De Un Estudiante De Diseño Grafico. Here you can also see my Design Page.

My other big love is photography, specially portraits photography— 🙂 but many of you don’t really know that I also love wedding,  commercial,  architecture photography….the list goes on…. But I only house two of those genres, Weddings and Portraits— because that what I want to shoot the most.
Then we got the usual suspects Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Vimeo.
Each of this channels is a gate way of communicating my what I love to do. Each one of them help me find the appropriate way to communicate, vent, and make people happy with my art. 🙂

If you enjoyed  what I do, maybe your friend will too. So please share me!
My Portrait page

My  Wedding pageMy Pinterest page

My Instagram page

My Design Page

The beauty & the dress—Why I love going to thrift shops

I love going to thrift shops! It’s been almost a year since my visit to the Salvation Army and getting this dress for 3 bucks but I had not found the time to shoot it until now. I have a “je ne sais quoi” for old furniture/clothing and I have been wanting to do a vintage-looking portrait with a Victorian style meets Renaissance period, meets Edwardian… If I make any sense.

The Set Up
For this shoot I wanted a dark, moody look that reflected an old painting style with soft and warm tones and very dark contrasting shadows.
I used an Einstein E640, diffused by a 22″ beauty dish, a sock  and a reflector. The lamp bolt also gave a bit of a warm tone.
Hair and make up was very simple. My MUA just did a bit of blush and nothing more. She actually told me that it was prohibited for women to wear make up during that time—crazy stuff.
Everything was shot with a 50 mm at 3.4 and the strobe at minimum power. The light was placed mimicking the position of the sun for a more natural look.

The final Images
At the end, I got the look and feel I was going for and finally, got to shoot my vintage dress 🙂

PIn Me Up

I can’t believe how fun this session was. A tease for
you… 🙂 With the beautiful Johanna Espinal.
MakeOver: Making Faces.

Gratitud—the end of the year

It is almost the end of the year, time I get all melancholic and revise my past months and see how little is left for this year to end. Then, What comes next? gets in mind. New ideas, exciting places to shoot and great people to meet… but before I plan my next 12 months, I think is time for a recount.

What happened?
This past three years I had learn so many things—starting by practicing gratefulness. And not just thinking about it, but to really feel it and experimenting how life-changing this positive feeling could be.
I once was a really negative person, not negative in being a dark cloud in peoples live but negative towards my own achievements and trusting levels. If something good happened to me, I was getting ready for the disappointment— because in my mind it was too good to be true. There were always something negative to the positive—You graduated from college… But not with an 4.0 gpa or a great school. You have your own place… But in a really bad neighborhood. I always found the way to bit the shit out of my happiness and my little achievements.

What did I do?
Everything started to change one night after letting go decades of anger and self hate. That was the night I decided to raise a family and bring a child to the world. But before that, I felt the need of a soul cleanser. First, I needed to ID my feelings and find a way to make peace with myself. Second, to take actions.

Many of this type of problems happens when you are part of a dysfunctional household when you are a kid— and I was not an exception. But it was time for me to put an end to the past and start fresh because I felt I deserved it. So I did it.
Today
That decision taught me so much about feelings and how you can turn you life around by just switching your thoughts and being gratefully positive. Now I see things so much clear and different. I now understand that life is full of problems but is how you approach to the problems that makes the difference. Looking for the positive in any situation instate of the negative bring me more of happiness and better results.

Now I let myself be grateful and happy.
I let myself to love more
I let myself to laugh more
I let myself to give thanks more
I let myself to give… but really give more
I let myself to joke more and be less serious
I must of all, I let my self to be who I want to be

Only you can make your own happiness.

Books that can change your life
–The Science of Getting Rich
-The Law of Attraction

Necessary Unwinding Creative Time

Sometimes as creatives we need to unwind and play like the kids that we are— just do anything without the need of having a particular aim. Take it as “Play Time,” time for you to just do whatever the heck you want. This time, we shot this two beautiful ladies with the fashion-careless direction in mind.

We headed to the Hunts Point Industrial Park in the Bronx where we got all sorts of textures and very factory like backgrounds… great place to shoot.
Make Up: Katherine Guzman
Model: Marialys Fernandez, Heidy Fernández

How & where to buy Vintage Props for your fantasy shoot for dirt cheap

So you are planning a fantasy shoot and are looking for that perfect vintage props that will complement your model and help tell the story you are trying to capture? Or you are just someone that wants to have a photoshoot showing a particular time in history and are looking for props for visuals? Then read-on. To illustrate my points, I will use “The Red Witch’s Dead”  a shoot I did a couple of years.

Planning the shoot
This seems a bit elementary but many of us forget to put together a concise plan on what the shoot is about and what elements are needed to tell that particular story.
I always start with a theme. For example, the topic of the shoot below was “Witch” but it was a witch with the quality of a vampire—you know coming out at night and being a huge enemy of the sun.
I wanted the main character to be colorful and somehow in fashion… I mean Dracula is always portrayed as a guy with good taste, why not this witch?. So started thinking about dresses  and other elements that will bring this character to live.
I got this dress for 3 dollars plus 7 dollars to have it clean up— total 10 bucks.   

Where to buy 

I started looking for a dress that had the elements needed for the shoot based on the story I wanted to tell. When I’m looking for props there are a few places that I always pay a visit to.
1- The Salvation Army: Love this store. There you will find anything from vintage picture frames to old wedding dresses for great prices. Most of the clothing there ranges from $4 bucks to $10 and so. They get new-old merchandise everyday so the inventory is always “fresh”.
2- Goodwill: Is the same structure as The Salvation Army. The store is divided by departments and have great things but they are a bit pricier that TSA.
3- Your Neighborhood Second Hand Store: If I need vintage furniture for cheap, and I haven’t had any luck at TSA or Goowill I’ll pay a visit to a second hand store. The prices ranges  depending on the furniture and the neighborhood but you always find great things that need little or no repair at all. Other options are garage sales and consignment stores where you can buy and trade furniture.

What to buy
Great, I got my main prop—The Dress. Now I need complementary items that solidifies the whole story. For this shoot I wanted the witch to have a cape, just like Dracula. I used an old bed sheet and some rope I got from the 99 cent store to create the cape that will make her look like a million bucks. I also got me a carved wooden box a found at Goodwill for 3 bucks. These extra props helped a ton on telling the story.

This package cost me around 4 bucks

The shooting
Once you got all of your elements make sure they are in working conditions before they are use. For example, if you buy any wearables wash them before use. You never know.
If you got any furniture check for potential elements that can hurt your model—like loose legs, nails or any other things. But this is something you really need to pay attention before buying.

End results
There nothing more fun to me than doing a theme photoshot.  The whole idea of creating something out of pieces give me joy. But the best thing is to see the end result. Here I attached some behind the scene shoot and the final results of a few of my fantasy shoots. Enjoy!

It was a very cold day but we had lots of fun.

This shoot was done the same day different theme

You can view more about this particular shoot here

If you liked it please share it! 🙂 MakeUp— Yomaira Beltre

Why this is important to me—why do I do create photographs

Finally the blog is here. This is one part of my site I really wanted to have since this is a great way for you to know me a little more and for me to just be me :). There’s no need for explaining what this blog is all about but it will be a place where you can read and see my idiosyncrasy and my virtues—Including typos and grammatical errors.

So, why do I do create photographs? I asked, and the answer is for pure enjoyment. I love making people happy and showing women how beautiful they really are, regardless of shape or any other popular believe. The whole idea behind my portraits is to bring a sense of well-being and self harmony. Also, to wrap it all up to be saved for ages.

It is not only about the photos and the Folio Box, it is your legacy as a woman saved to share with your future generation. I can’t imagine the feeling of one of my clients opening the box after 20 years and sharing their beautiful portraits with their grandkids and relatives. It is just priceless knowing that you will be here even if your time has expired.
This is my first post here. I welcome you to follow it—even thought I know it will be a bit hard for me to write every week but I’ll give it a try.
Let Love Adorn You.