My first photo book

As a result of six months of quarantine restrictions and a life under locked down, assisted and mentored by photographer Aaron Sosa, I was able to finally publish my first street photography photo book… "Panameño Vida Mía".

Truth is, it never occurred to me to become a published author, even less to be considered a photographer. What I do for living is completely different from these activities. I am a husband, a father of two boys, and spent my working hours as corporate account manager for a technology company here in my hometown of Panama. Nevertheless, out of a necessity to take better pictures of my family I indulged myself many years ago in purchasing my first "real camera”, a Nikon D3200. I became an expert on shooting all photos in Auto Mode, shameless, and indeed very naive.

I'll be honest, I just couldn't understand how to operate the camera. Reading books and watching videos was all too confusing, and whatever sense of smarts I thought I had crumbled like a cookie when facing the possibility of switching to Manual Mode. I was truly scared of Manual Mode. But a the end, pictures looked better than those from the crappy point and shoot cameras, I was happy, and that's all that mattered. Anyhow, back then it appeared that facebook knew deep down I was struggling in using the camera and for months it kept popping ads about taking some photography classes with a local expert. Well, one day, I clicked the ad-bait, and met then my photography coach, Aaron Sosa, a photographer from Venezuela living with his family in Panama, who among other things, helped students like me to learn about the art of photography. Indeed, he was very influential in my interest in street photography, and since the very first workshop on the streets of Casco Viejo, I haven't stopped still five years later.

Working on a photo book is demanding, an arduous creative job, that requires a lot of patience and focus. It is not only the reviewal and selection of thousands of pictures taken from different barrios in Panama City, but also the process of deciding on a collection of pictures that could work together on a common theme, a common thread that binds them with meaning. It took me a while to see the binding pattern, to be able to hear the conversation among photographs in my digital vault, but with practice and guidance I started to see it, in bits and pieces, sometimes a frustrating process, but very important in order to distill a final collection of pictures that would depict the comings and goings of the daily lives of Panamanians in the city.

Only then, the real work starts, polishing and editing the pictures within a common feel and structure. The process of defining pixels and file sizes, the canvas proportional to the measures of the book, the laborious and tedious task of printing and taping of pictures on the wall, to get a visual perspective of the job. And doing everything once you finished all over again, until a definite sequence, pairing, and selection iof pictures is decided. I remember finishing a draft version that seemed quite definite, but once I tested the work with a few friends I found the feedback too important to go unnoticed, only to restart the selection process again.

And the details, the small details, those are the ones that can kill a project like these, because they work on your focus and stamina. Details demand patience to find little mistakes, editing errors, placement errors, sequence misprints. I look back and understand it all was a necessary process in order to publish a first photo book.

Now, my book "Panameño Vida Mïa” has been published. In a couple of days it will show up in you Amazon search, but for the moment, anyone interested could find it in blurb.com at the following link https://www.blurb.com/b/10286496-paname-o-vida-m-a

I appreciate your support to make this work relevant. Thanks to my lovely wife for supporting (and bearing with me) my creative process, to my mom (I guess my biggest fan), to friends and family for encouraging me to pursue this passion for the art of photography, and a special gratitude to Aaron for encouraging and guiding me through this venture.

Allow me to share a few pictures of my work.