Darkboxnotes, will start a series of interviews with different photographers and artists. This time, Vicente Alfonso:

Define yourself

I think that one of the most difficult things to do during our life is to try to define ourselves, but I’m going to try to do it here.

My name is Vicente Alonso. I’m a dreamer who thought about conquering the world when I was a 10-year-old kid. A dreamer who saw the world conquer himself when turning 30. I’ve passed all my life staring at maps, visiting great masterpieces and learning about construction. This lead me to study Technical Architecture in a beginning, and Engineering afterward. With small enthusiasm to tell you the truth.

I still damn my 18-year-old period with such an ingenuity and lack of experience, surrounded by lots of hesitation. All these would not help me at all to find out the correct path.

So, at the end, I decided to become a professional photographer. There is no better way to live your life than making what you really like to do.

Some words about you. How would you define yourself as a photographer? When did you started? Where would you like to arrive?

Photography is something we all have inside ourselves, from birth. Each of us sees reality with a different perspective, and that is also part of photography. But till we don’t decide to immortalize that reality we aren’t prepared to become photographers. I did this step in 2007 and from that year onwards I haven’t stopped to study photography with all the possible means available.

To be able to be defined as a photographer I still need some decades of experience-achievement, though.

To life from what you like is my main target.

What do you think about the photography sector i n Spain?

This sector is a free commerce sector, with its advantages and inconveniences. If you are able to offer a unique style able to catch the attention of the viewers and future consumers, you can have your space in it. If not, you can still find your small space but it will take more time to achieve your goal.

I know several photographers that have a second job, which doesn’t help you much to be a positive person.

Under my point of view, the possibilities that new technologies brings us at low cost have made this sector more open for professionals, but also more complicated as a job.

What goals have you achieved in these past years?

I’m a professional photographer now, something unthinkable only four years ago. Now I need to make real a more complicated target: to be able to have an stable future in this profession.

It’s a difficult question, but, personally talking, how would you define photography?

I think that I already did in my first answer here, I didn’t realize it. For me it’s a way of feeling and capturing the reality around us.

Which are the photos with more success that you have taken?

Success for a discipline cataloged as art, is something really subjective. I think that success should be qualified by oneself during a long time period.

One of the biggest successes I can achieve is to be able to watch again a photo I took time ago and be able to feel the same or to feel even more for it compared to the first time I saw it once taken.

Is there any photographer that has inspired you or influenced your career? How?

The influences I’ve had, were taken from the style I liked and not from a single photographer. I love photography as it is, and what I might like from a photographer I might no like it in another. I always try to take out the good things of each photographer, without centering myself in a whole.

Which advices would you give to someone who would like to start his/her career as a photographer in Spain?

Life is too short to waste it doing something you don’t like.

I really think I need more experience to answer you this question in a more appropriate manner.

In which way social networking is helping you to promote your work? Which ones do you use?

Social networking in the net is certainly having a strong role in my self promotion, specially talking about personal web centered ones. Although I do promote myself using different means. These networks allow many people to access your work independently from their geographical location, and that has no prize. What before cost millions, now you get it with a simple host and domain, accessible to almost any person.

What better resume can you have than showing to the world what you are able to do.

To talk about photography and its gear, is very subjective. Anyway, if you could travel trough time to the past, which errors would have you avoided when buying and choosing the gear?

Buy the camera body which better fits to what you need and a lens with the highest quality possible according to your pocket.

With my first reflex I learned not to buy another camera with a so called “kitero” lens (slang that means the “default kit” lens). It’s not that it was bad, but it was not fitting what I wanted. We have to think about the type of photography we would like to take, and from here seek for what we need.

When we start with photography we only dream about having all possible focus ranges covered, forgetting lots of characteristics very important of each of the lenses. You pay your inexperience, but just once ( okay, maybe twice).

What would you ask to Vicente Alonso?

Now what I just really need are answers. I find myself in middle of one of the most difficult moments in my life, which I’d like to solve with lots of patience and illusion.

Check more about Vicente Alfonso’s portfolio at: vicentealfonso.com

And his flickr account

Follow him on twitter @VicenteAlfonso

His Blog: fotoaprendiz.com