Our guru of the month visits us from the City of Light, from the country of Picasso: Malaga.
José Daaz is a professional photographer specializing in wedding and portrait photography and runs a multifaceted photography and design studio. After reading the interview, you will see that I do not exaggerate when I say that José Daaz is the most striking example of passion and of himself. For me, José is also an example of generosity and altruism, because it is not easy for a professional photographer to agree to tell you about his beginnings, his learnings, his mistakes and his philosophy, in which our guest today has become disinterested. sharing with all of us.
Without further ado I leave you with the interview
Jose: Hello, a greeting to all the readers of the Photographers Blog and thank you very much to Mario for contacting me and for being interested in interviewing me. For those who don’t know me, I’m José Díaz and I’m a photographer specializing in weddings and portraits, and I love my work. I run a photographic studio in Malaga where other photography, advertising, fashion, etc. are also held. I hope you find my answers to Mario’s questions interesting.
Editor: Tell us about your beginnings José, what led you to this work ?, at what point did you decide that you wanted to dedicate yourself to professional photography ?, remember having had many difficulties?
José: I have two beginnings in photography, at the amateur level and at the professional level, at the amateur level I started in art school. While studying graphics, I had to buy an SLR camera for the subject of photography, discover everything an SLR could do and everything I had missed with my little compact cameras was a revolution for me, here I was 20 years old, (my first SLR was a Nikon F65). After working with my little F65, I quickly discovered that I was passionate about photography, every day I discovered something new, trying to photograph landscapes, animals, cars, buildings, sports?
Photography had become my passion, 4 years later, I decided to make my hobby my job. It was a hard start for me, I decided to set up a photography store to sell photographic material and take advantage of the place to create a small studio in the back and be able to take some photos. It was difficult because I started from scratch, my photography knowledge was extensive but at the same time very basic to be a professional photographer and although I did business management and marketing courses I did not have all the experience necessary to start a business. from scratch, even though I started first, with a store that kept me close to photography so that as I continued to learn it would allow me to generate income to support myself, that’s not what I really wanted, I was wasting a lot of time with suppliers and I was looking for brands and products on demand and I was moving away from what I really liked, photographing. Over time the studio grew larger and was the most used area of the store, a few years later we stopped selling photographic equipment and the store became a studio.
On this path the main difficulties were caused by my inexperience, I did not know how to relate and enter the world of photography and make myself known, and neither did I find or see colleagues who did a job as I wanted to do, my mistake was looking only at myself city, if I returned I would have started working as an assistant to a photographer who liked his job. The hardest part was identifying with my own work style and making it known to attract clients who were looking for this type of work or this reporting philosophy. A very clear example of this is that at the beginning I did all kinds of reports, depending on what they asked me, and that was a big mistake, we can think that if we are photographers, we can do any work with any style but it is not like that. Over time, you can do the type of work that you like best or that you like best. Now it is the clients who have to identify with my style and when they look for me or contact me through the web, they have already seen what I can offer and they already know it, which was not always the case because when I started I had no external influence nor any starting point and above all I had to work to get my support, at that time my commercial side was dominant, hehe.
Honey, thinking about the past now, I could write a bug book to avoid starting your own photography business or deciding to become a professional photographer.
Editor: This is very interesting, and no doubt your experience will be useful for more than one of our readers who have basically the desire to one day become professional photographers. Going back to the present, and being your specialty of wedding photography, tell us how you prepare for such a report.
José: The key to being successful in a job is specialization, as you said before, my specialty is wedding reporting and portraiture. The rest of the photographic works are carried out through the studio by professionals specialized in each sector. A marriage report for me is an event of great responsibility where events occur that are never under our control and cannot be repeated, so the completion of a marriage report according to our philosophy and our way of working requires a process of very long preparation. . But if we focus on the days before the wedding, the preparations range from taking care of the diet, yes, the diet, because imagine that the day before the wedding I have a meal that hurts and the day of the wedding does not. I am not in a position to take photos, I hope that never happens to me, as long as I do not have duplicate photographic equipment to avoid possible breakdowns, or to prepare the routes that we will take on the wedding day. We also take great care of the equipment and keep it updated, we are two people who do the report with complete photographic equipment each and a replacement.
If we go back a little further in time, something very important to me is to do a photo shoot before the wedding, meet the bride and groom and break the ice a little bit, it is not the same that I introduce myself on the day of the wedding as the photographer who already knows me for José and for my work lived in first person , for me it is very rewarding that my clients end up being my friends and arrive at the wedding and that the family will tell me the photos before the wedding and how much they loved them.
Editor: As an anecdote, have you ever had a colleague who is not satisfied with your work? When preparing your report, do you do something to avoid falling into an unpleasant situation like this?
Jose: Fortunately, or rather by my work system, I have never had an unmet partner, but of course you can’t compare today’s customer satisfaction with that of 3 years ago, my work has evolved a lot during this period and it shows. For the most part, I can say that a grandmother missed the typical boyfriend pose she was looking for for her granddaughter, but of course, the ones looking for me like that are the little ones. Friends.
Editor: In the case of normal couples who are not originally engaged in the world of photography and image, do you have a hard time communicating your ideas, poses, etc. ?
José: This question is easy. No, but I’ll explain a bit. My job on the wedding day is to tell what is happening, that is, I limit myself to capturing every moment of this great day, in addition to my interpretation of each moment, that is to say that I am responsible for looking for the angles. , the frames? and above all not to miss any expression or spontaneous gesture, obviously every marriage is different. But to answer the question, I’m going to tell you a bit about how we do a post-wedding session, where we look for more poses and places with more artistic freedom. In this session, when I try to find a certain pose or a certain gesture and it is difficult for me to find it, we simply move on to another situation or action, the main thing is that the couple always feel comfortable. comfortable and natural. As you mentioned in the question, most of the clients are not image professionals so we just have to explain the pose or action in some other way instead of saying go here or there, this or that way. . ?. More than creating the situation, it is necessary to provoke it, instead of saying: laugh! We must provoke a smile.
Editorial: An inescapable question . . . what equipment do you work with (camera and lens) ?, from which part of your team would you never want to separate ?, a camera or lens that you particularly like?
Jose: My current equipment is Nikon, I work with D700 cameras and lenses with maximum apertures, f / 2. 8 for yf / 1. 4 zooms for fixed lenses. We use natural light for most of the report, but we have 3 flashes to film. camera (without being mounted on top of the camera, fired by the remote flash system or by radio frequency transmitters and receivers). Currently I wouldn’t get rid of any of the ones I have, but before I tried other equipment on my relatively recent debut and now I would never relate to a lens of f number greater than 2. 8 or to an SLR camera that does not have an FX sensor and high sensitivity. My favorite lenses are the 24-70mm f/2. 8 zoom for its versatility and 50mm f/1. 4 main lens for its maneuverability and aperture. And for portraits, I don’t think there’s anything better than the fixed 85mm f/1. 4.
Editorial: Retouching themes. . Do you consider yourself an advocate or a critic of digital retouching?
José: I will ask this question to my specialty, the marriage report. I don’t use Photoshop for any of the images you see on the web or on the blog, except in very, very rare occasions, they are only rendered in Lightroom or Camera RAW. Where I use editing programs is when creating the album. As for retouching, I am in favor but as long as it does not alter reality or the result, even if it is realistic, it is excessive, that is to say that we can use retouching to eliminate a certain temporary defect or a certain Failure in the composition because it was not noticed for example when taking a photo of a cigarette butt on the ground behind or something similar. But I am against excessive touch-ups, I do not like to soften excess skin tone and lose the natural texture of the skin, for example. And of course, we never use digital montages of photos that are not as they were captured for the reports that we are going to deliver to the client, for me an image must be beautiful without the need to decorate it with a digital element or a montage. For example, if we want a photo in Paris, we have to go to Paris to take it, not take Paris to the photo and put it in the background.
Editor: Finally, would you like to share your personal tips with readers of the photographer’s blog?
Joseph: If I want to make a portrait of someone who smiles, not only do I tell them to smile, I try to talk about something or tell them to do something stupid so that laughter comes out spontaneously, perhaps the most important thing and at the same time the most complicated trick is the preparation and constant search of places, I think the most effective thing for this job is to specialize in what you like and put a lot , a lot of dedication and enthusiasm at work. he’ll come alone.
Editor: Thank you very much for your collaboration José, without a doubt many lessons can be learned from your experiences, we wish you great luck and that you continue to make many couples happy for their great day.
You can follow Jose Daaz and admire his work more or contact him through the following links: