Leica M10

Downtown San Antonio

If there's something that I love, it's shooting Street Photography in a busy downtown city. I live in San Antonio, so I'm mostly just doing that here; however, I am ready to expand and start venturing out to different cities all over the U.S., who knows, maybe in another country before you know it. For the time being I will be here in Texas.

On this particular day, everything was clicking, I inherently could feel that I was making all of the right moves, walking down all of the right blocks, catching all of the right scenes, meeting all of the right people. As much I would like to say it's always this way, it sadly is not. The thing with Street photography is that you need people, and not just any person, I tend to try to capture interesting people, perhaps even captivating, but interesting at the least. A common problem in the downtown area of San Antonio is that San Antonio is a big tourist city, with all due respect to the fine tourists that enjoy visiting this beautiful city, we love having them here! However, suffice to say, they are generally not the audience that I am after.

I'm still young in my Street Photography career, again I specialize in portraits, but there is this magic out on the streets. Sometimes you will go out for an hour or two and get nada, zilch. You consider quitting, never going out there again, selling all of your photography gear, getting a job at some high rise and collecting on that 401k -- but then something magical happens, you capture that one moment, that one moment that makes you feel like everything is going to be just alright, that moment that justifies this crazy foray into photography. Will that photo you've captured change the world? No. Will it be a pulitzer prize winning photograph? Doubtful. Will that photo pay off your college tuition? Absolutely not. But that magical moment could just happen one day. I can not guarantee this magical moment ever will happen -- but I can guarantee this magical moment will never happen if you do not put yourself out there and try.

P.S. that magical moment for me on this day was meeting Gaby Albo, who is the lead actress in the musical On Your Feet, about Gloria Estefan.