An Introduction...

My name is Hans Christian Gonzalez.  I was born in August 22nd, 1973 in the town of Salcedo, Dominican Republic.  As you guessed it,  I am 37 years old.    I have three sisters from my mother's side: Maribel 41, Biembenida (Amy) 39 , and Rosa 31.   Two Brothers and one sister from my father's  side:  Emmanuel, Alex, and Stephanie.   My parents divorced when I was about 12.  My mother moved from Salcedo to Santiago and I moved with her when I turned 13.   Lived with my mother and three sisters for 6 years before moving to Paterson, NJ when I was 18.

In Paterson, I lived with my grandparents Aida and Luis for almost a year.   Aida was beautiful blond with very pale skin and Luis was of a dark complexion.  They loved each other but never stopped arguing.

I Worked at a Carton factory where I made 5.50 an hour,   Took English classes at a school during the evenings.  No, I never finished High School.  Instead,  smart Hans decided to take the GED test.  Because of my poor English, I had to take it  three times before passing, never studied for it thought.  It was a stupid test designed for people who hated education.   I passed with a very high number. 

During that time in Patterson,  I used to commute every Sunday to New York to visit my grandmother, aunts, uncles and alcoholic cousins from my father's side of the family.  My girlfriend back then was Yesenia. We were together for about a year before that, but the relationship ended in the summer of that year 1992.

When I moved to New York city in December of 1992,  I lived with my mom and little sister in a one bedroom apartment that my mother had rented in Inwood.  Immediately coming to the city,  I enrolled in a a special study program designed to prepare high school drop-outs to work in an office environment.  I learned how to type, use a computer,  and prepare my resume.  It was a cool place to study because the city gave me 60 dollars or so a week to attend so I could pay for my lunch and transportation.

The program was going to be for around 9 months and started in January of 1993.  Around the same time,  I started to work in D'Agostino Supermarket down in the Greenwich Village.    I've got that job by chance while accompanying my second cousin Elena to an agency that helped pregnant women get jobs.   The officer took a look at me and asked me if I was working, and I said no, and he recommended me to work for D'Agostino.  I started to work part-time for D'agostino slicing turkeys and cheeses and making sandwiches.  It was a great change of environment.  The Greenwich Village was a great place to work and meet chicks.    

After my program completed I was hired by Castle Check Cashing where I made 7.00 per hour.  I worked at Castle for almost 4 years as a part time teller.    In the Spring of 1994 I started going to Baruch College  I wanted to become an executive.  I did some theater work in my first semester.  Landed a mayor role in a big production called Filumena, where I played a rich merchant owner, seducer of women.  The funny thing was that I didn't know much English back then to memorize some many lines, but I did and was very impressed at my performance.  

Baruch was an amazing place to study  and make friends.   Because I never finished high school, getting accepted there was almost a miracle.   There,  I learned how to read and write in English.  The classes that I loved the most were the ones that involved literature, writing, and reading.  Psychology, Sociology, Political Science,  Philosophy, Art...   It was orgasmic to sit through those classes.  It was one of the best experiences of my life. 

In 1995 I decided to change jobs as an office filing clerk at a mental health clinic in the Upper West Side.  

I worked there for about a year and hated it.  By December of that year I quit without having a job to fall back on.  Then bad things began to unfold.  I stopped paying my credit card bills,  didn't have enough money to continue going to school,  and the Spring semester of 1996 I dropped out of Baruch.  

I finally found a part time job at Sears in the Bronx and worked for a few months at UPS emptying trucks in the summer of 1996.  It was a horrible experience.

In January of 1996 I met Olga,  who would become my wife and mother of my child a year later.  She got pregnant in January of 1997,  and moved with her in June of that year in the city of Miami.   We married in the 29th of September.  Hannah, my daughter was born five days later, on October 3rd. 

It was in Miami where I started my retail career.  I began working at Bally of Switzerland there.  One of the associates had died of a heart attack and the manager needed to replaced him.  I felt sorry for the guy,  but was happy to get a stable full time job to support my family.  However,   the store was closed in June of 1998 and I was transferred to a Bally in Hackensack, NJ out of fear of being unemployed with a newborn child.

I moved to New York and commuted to Hackensack, NJ for about 6 months until I got a job in New York working for a French Shoe company called JM Weston.   Worked there for 2 years under a crazy manager named Bruno Francois.  In the Summer of 2000 I was approached by Hermes and worked for a year in John Lobb Hermes.  In November of 2001 I started working for Prada and stayed there until the end of 2005.  I started working in the ultra exclusive Bergdorf Goodman Shoe Salon in January of 2006 and stayed there for about 3 years, until I got laid off in January of 2009.  

My marriage to Olga ended in December of 2006 after many futile attempts to avoid the inevitable.  My frustrations resulted falling into depression and not paying attention at my work, which resulted of being thrown out for poor sales performance.    

Now that 2011 is upon us, the start of a new year and a new decade,   I humbly ask God for guidance and support.  Because I do hope to get a second chance on being happy.  We all deserve that.

By Hans.

CREATIVITY

We live in a thought world.   Most of what you see around you was first created in the mind in a form of a thought.   We hear this statement countless of times, but do we know what it actually means?  

Pay attention and  think for a moment.  The computer monitor in front of you, the CPU, the empty cup of coffee, your chair, the layout of your apartment, your TV, your mattress, the lamp, your sofa,  etcetera were first created in the mind of the person or persons that helped designed them.  Take this into consideration the next time that you come outside.  Think about everything that you see, and see it through the eyes of the people that invented them.  How would you perceive your world?  


Said it another way, everything that was created by us humans had to first come into form in the mind.  A thought is the blueprint of everything that was created.  Which means, that in order for you to create anything, you first need to see it in your mind as real as it would look when you have it.   You can't really create anything if you first can't see it in your mind. 


Think for a moment.  Are your thoughts a reflection of what you see around you? Or are the things around you a reflection of your thoughts?  If everything is created by the things that you think, and by what you say,  then your whole life is currently being created by what you think, say and do on a daily basis.  

Two things to keep in mind.  First, we all have a brain, and the power to think.   There are infinite possibilities.  You can either design with your mind the life that you want to live, never stopping until you see that vision your reality (why settle for less?).   Or we could just handle the things that were already invented.  


What do I mean by that?  Well,  most likely, you go to work for a company that was originally created by somebody else.  You can become extremely good at what you do.  You can be an excellent manager, and make enough money  to have the impression that you are making it.  But who is more powerful?  The man that came up with the original idea to start the company that grew to the point of becoming an empire?   Or you, who went to college to learn how to successfully manage it?

We hear that ideas make us rich.  How many of us really think that?  Do we really use our imagination?  We waste so much energy in mindless conversations with no substance.  We are so fixated on entertainment, on escape, on getting hooked on vices, on having a good time that very little if any is spent on thinking the things we want to think.  Have we forgot our purpose?   

The first thing that you have to keep in mind is that you are unique.  Stop wasting your time comparing yourself to others.  Your perception is deeply subjective and what comes out of your mouth are just opinions.   Everything is an illusion. Why?  Because everything that surrounds you at this moment,  i.e,   the money, the family,  your friends, problems, etc, will at some point disappear.  Only you will remain 'til the end.  And you too, will cease to exist.   

Your mind creates everything.  Realizing this gives you tremendous power.  Because as long as you think that things just happen, you will never exercise the power that resides deep within you.  Only when you can clearly see that everything in your life was brought about with your thoughts,  you will start to assume more  responsibility for everything that surrounds you.   


Then, and only then, the wheels of your fate will begin to turn and you'll have the life that you've always dreamed.  

By Hans Gonzalez.  

Self-Help Books

Talks and writings of the law of attraction, and the power of the mind have become very popular nowadays.  Around 7 billion dollars in self-help books are sold each year, and if you count all the audio tapes, infomercials, weight loss programs and personal coaching systems being sold in the United States,  the figure comes close to 10 billion.

From a point of view,  these figures indicate that the general public is leaning toward  a betterment of their own lot in life.   It is a fact that people have the ability to enhance their current level of happiness.  That we can get out of debt, lose weight,  live in an abudance of love, money, and good health.  But if the underlying need to seek improvement stems from a deep sense of being incomplete, not good enough,  unhappy, or depressed,  then no matter how many books we read, tapes we listen to, or seminars we attend to, the continuing need to spend more money on self-improvement systems will never stop growing.

This is not to say that self-help books  do not offer practical advice, or that the reading of them is a complete waste of time.  Many of them are well-written, well-researched, and very helpful indeed.  But from the reader's standpoint, if the need to read them comes from a shaky foundation such as lack or the feeling of inadequacy, the problem will continue to persist, and the buying and collecting and reading of these types of books will just be a reminder of this belief: that there is something really wrong with you.

Reading lots of these books, one after another, creates a false feeling of hope.  Most of us do not know how to read books anyway.  If you read a book only once, all you do is to become familiar with its subject.   To really understand it,  you will at least have to read it 10 times.   With a long list of books to buy and read, where are you going to find the time to do that?

Living with a deep feeling of unworthiness is a horrible way to live.  And it mostly comes from a belief that we have convinced ourselves in believing.  It is the lie that robs us from our healthy sense of worth.  Telling us that there is something really wrong with us, fixing our attention to what we believe are a long list of things we wish we never had in our lives.

This belief comes from various sources. One source is living in a society that is dominated by consumerism.   I am sure that you have heard this before.   A capitalist society works by making people buy things, and by teaching them that the  products being developed are things that they need to buy to better their lives.  So, billions of dollars are spent to tell you, that unless you have a particular product, you are left out, not good enough, etc.

Other more complex sources are traumas and painful experiences from early in life.   But in the final analysis,  the feeling of not being good enough is produced in our own brain by a belief from something that we told ourselves repeatedly after a painful experience  or set of experiences;  from what we read in magazines, newspapers, see in TV, the movies,  etc.

Everything that I am writing to you about in this post can be expanded to many pages.  But the message  that I want to convey is this:  If you feel the need to buy a book because you think you are not good enough,  don't do it!   Address the feeling.  Listen to your thoughts,  your self-talk, ideas of life, etc.  Instead of a book,  study yourself, what drives you to do the things that you do and it will be a far greater investment of your time.

In your reflection, you will find, that you are an amazing creature.  A miracle of nature, who has been given the gift of life.  That no matter your short-comings, past mistakes, or current situation,  you have the ability to stop and think, and appreciate all the goodness that surrounds you.  The people that are in your life,  your health,  good moments,  special moments, etc.

Thanks for reading.

Hans.

NAMESAKE

My name is Hans Christian Gonzalez.   I was named after the danish children books writer Hans Christian Andersen.  For me, it has always been striking to see people's reactions whenever I introduce myself to them.  Most find it odd that someone with a spanish accent like me has a name that is very popular for people living in Germany and Denmark.   Their reactions are natural and amusing at times.  But they reveal a fundamental characteristic of human behavior:  Our learned ability of gaining familiarity through association.

Imagine, if you can,  that every time you introduce yourself to someone,  the first thing that comes out of the person's mouth is "why is your name Fernando,  Roger, or Braulio, and then, after you've told them the familiar story that you told a thousand times, their react with an expression of disbelief, followed by the question: "but why?"  I can tell you.  At first, you find it amusing, but after a while, freaking annoying.  Just because I am dominican doesn't mean my name has to be of spanish origin.  It is true that one  meaning of culture refers to the behaviors and characteristics of a particular social, ethnic or age group being similar in nature.  But that doesn't mean that we should be regarded as photocopies of one another.

In gaining familiarity through mental association,  most of us fall into the trap of stereotyping.  It doesn't matter if we do it with countries, socieities, groups, individuals or personal experiences.  The impact is always the same.  The familiar feeling of thinking that we know something when we don't.  A feeling based on assumptions or personal opinion, not on facts, or actual experience.

Some argue that this behavior stems from our survival instics.  You have a positive or negative experience with someone or something, and the mind tells you that in every future event when a particular person that resembles that character or you are about to experience a similar experience,  the exact same thing is going to happen.  If the experience was painful,  we become afraid and forbid ourselves from getting to know that person, or experiencing such event.

The statement "All Americans think that Latin people are not to be trusted" is a stereotype.  "Lots of Americans think that most, if not all spanish-speaking people have spanish names" is not.   If a person
cannot comprehend why I was named after a famous danish chidren books writer,  I say that the person has a very strong steretype of spanish-speaking people.   Think about it!  Are latin people's education limited to books written only in Latin America?  Couldn't my parents know of famous European writers born in the 19th Century?  Or are we so ignorant that all we know is to play baseball, soccer, have amazing sex or deal with drugs?

It takes a lot of guts to allow ourselves the freedom of living moment-to-moment.  Finding comfort within our ideas, traditions and beliefs are just fear mechanisms that sound great to most people.   We even have festivals and organize events to celebrate our heritage and differences.  But the world is for the  person who is not afraid of leaving their comfort zone.  Of venturing to new territories, getting to know other cultures, languages and systems of beliefs.  The world is for the few ones  that celebrate the common similarities that exists among us all.  Thereby expanding their horizons, richness of experiences,  etc.

Thanks for reading,

Hans Gonzalez.  

Salcedo

Salcedo was a name of a town in the Dominican Republic.   So far, It has had three names.  

The first one was Juana Nuñes,  then Salcedo,  and now Hnas Mirabal.  

It was the birth place of the Dominican Republic's most historically important sisters:  

the Mirabal sisters.  In a time prior to the sexual revolution of the 60s,  these three

sisters formed a secret organization which intention was to end dictatorship of the country's deadliest man:  Trujillo.  

This post is not meant to be a historical account of my own town or to describe its importance in a grand scale.  Rather, I will describe how important it was for me, for the 12 or so years I lived there.  

Its size was notoriously bothering to most people.  The town center was only a few kilometers long, and a few kilometers wide.  You could actually walk from one side of the town to another and come back in little or not time.  It's main source of income in the time I lived there (1973-1986) was agricuture.   People from the country side would come down to the town to sell their foodstuff and in turn buy  clothes, and supplies from the different stores  in the city.   It was always buzzing with the loud noise of motor bikes, pickup trucks and and public passenger cars and vans.   People came and went from Tenares, Sfco de Macoris,  Moca, La Vega, Santiago, Puerto Plata, and Sto Domingo. 

I remember the students lining up at the different exit streets toward Moca and Tenares,  hitchiking to go study in the different college institutions that were located in the neighboring towns.   

It had several clinics, a public school referred to there as Liceo, and several private schools, the most important of which was the Catholic school Sra. Corazon de Jesus.  

When I lived there, the town had two huge movie theaters:  Cine Ritz and Cine Karina, each from the same owner, and each in facing each other at the town's plaza (Where the Main Catholic Church Temple is located).   One very modern discotec called Disco Sound,  a very nice restaurant/disco called a Druño,  my uncle's discotec called "El Tipico Salcedo" (Since it was the 70s, where Disco was so popular,  the dance places were then called discoteques.)  a Pizza place referred to as "la Pizaria.  A huge hall made of wood called "el club",  four gas stations.  Two very famous clothing stores,  la tienda Alexander (my father's store), and tienda Tono Coniel, which was in the same block of my father's store.  Even though Tono was my father's biggest competitor,  I don't remember ever meeting the guy.     The famous car dealer Almanzar, which everyone said got rich by making fake money, and a Sport Complex in the outskirts of the city  referred to then as "el complejo" where the town's youth went to practice sports during the day,  and where the cheap prostitutes went with their clients during the night.
It was called by many as "el hotel gramita (grass hotel, figure it out).  

Everyone knew each other, or knew of each other in Salcedo.   Gossip ran rampant.  You couldn't do anything without everyone  finding out about it the next day.   Tenares and Villa Tapia were two small towns, part of Salcedo that were both seven kilometers away.  Tenares to the east, and Villa Tapia to the south.  Moca was 11 kilometers to the west. and Santiago (Dominican Republic's second largest city)  just 30 kilometers away, or half an hour by car.  Tenares was more popular than Villa tapia and it was where the super famous HD disco was located.  Tenares was important because it was more in contact with its neighboring town Sfo de Macoris, which was back then the Dominican Republic third largest city and one of the richest in the caribbean.   Sfo De Macoris was notorious for being the birth place of so many Dominican drug lords.  It had the largest collection of Mercedes Benz and imported cars in the region.  To the point of being called "Little Germany."   It also had a lot of motels.  something that Salcedo, nor Tenares had.  

Salcedo is a very intoxicating city.  I remember it was very hard for me to leave to Santiago when my mother decided to leave.  It felt as though like home.  its streets,  its people,  its places,  its hideouts, were so familiar, so comforting, so safe,  that to leave it all behind felt like hell.  

This is the story of my home town.  It no longer is the town I left behind.   And now it has grown to be a bigger and more important place.  But the old town, that I saw while growing up, the one with its loud noise, unique festivals, colorful carnivals, and a lively christmas season.   It will forever be inside my heart.    

                                                        Colegio Sagrado Corazon de Jesus (El Colegio de las Monjas)

Hans Gonzalez

The Secret of Success is not a Secret

The secret of sucess is not a secret. It is a type of information that has been widely distributed; talked and written about in countless books, magazines, etc. It has even been shown in montion pictures, documentaries, television shows, and other media. The details have been practically given to us for free and yet, we haven't really grasped the full significance of it.

Anyone that thinks he/she lacks something, oftentimes tries to enrich himself with the knowledge that will allow him to escape their current situation into a more stable, and/or fulfilling state. Most of those books that we will pick up from the public library or book store during our lifetime are well-written, and extremely resourceful. However brilliant the books might seem, we'll continue to find ourselves picking up other books, assisting other seminars and later feeling completely empty inside. The particular feeling of lack will continue to perpetrate our meaningless existence and we will not ask ourselves why.

Every day and every night, we constantly create our inner and outer universe with the thoughts and with the words that we speak from moment to moment. What we think life is, our concepts, ideas, and convictions are our own creations. Every single thought we think, and every single word we utter have extremely powerful consequenses. Regardless of whether or not we have proof of what we say, think or do, these things are the stuff from which we create our seemingly meaningless existence.

The fact that we can excersise full control of our thoughts, words and actions is absolute proof, that we can consciously create anything that bring us joy, happiness and laughter. This is the crucial point. It is the most important of all points because it is the one we have failed to grasp as individuals and as a society as a whole.

When I was 12, I heard the notion that we live in the word of Maya, which meant illusion. I was always fascinated with that concept, but never really fully grasped what it all meant. The word of Maya is the word of illusion. The thought that we are powerless, insignificant beings, not fully capable of having absolute control of our existence. But the fact is, we have always excercised absolute control of our lives. We have always have. Every time we declare something, every time that we think something, however trivial, however insignificant, we create it and bring it into our lives.

Your thoughts create your feelings. Feelings are created in the mind; what we feel in our bodies is created in our thoughts. Feelings drive us to act and not to act. Feelings are extremely powerful things, and yet, we are not fully aware that they are the product of our thoughts.

Just listen to your conversations. Your limits are your limits, and only yours. Every time you say you can or can't do something, you bring that into existence. Every time you declare that life is good, or bad. Every time you say and think that things are hard or good, etc. For most of us, we take our immidiate surroundings as reference points from which we draw our thoughts and words. Not knowing, that what we see has been attracted to us with the thougths, words and feelings we experience on a daily basis. Every time we think of reality, we are not aware that we are are actually seeing is just the reflection of what we have created up to that point. Which is exactly why most of us are forever caught on creating and re-creating our current situation for the remaining years or decades of our lives.

Regardless of your current situation. No matter in what part of the world you are right now, what religion, creed, culture, doctrine you belong to. I am here to tell you that you are an extremely powerful being, capable of achieving amazing things. Think of it. Your world will change, when your thoughts and feelings change. No matter what surrounds you right now:

The problems, the debts, the lonelines, the lack. Decide right now that it is 100% your responsibility. And with that, you set in motion the wheels of fortune to your favor. Regardless of your decision, this has always been the case. Stop blaming what happens in your life to circunstances, people or events. When you do, you relinquish all sense of responsibility, and will be forever the subject to the whims of what might or might not happen. Which is in all sense, is directly related to your thoughts, words and actions. This is the world of illusion. Get out of it now.

Written by

Hans Gonzalez.

07/15/2010

Quinciañera

Last Saturday I was honored to photograph a Quinciañera ceremony at a church in Brooklyn, New York. A Quinciañera is the coming-of age-ritual held in some Latin American cultures of a girl's fifteenth's birthday, somewhat similar to a sweet sixteen celebration.

Being a father of a twelve-year-old daughter, I paid close attention to what unfolded before my eyes. A catholic mass was held in honor of the girl, she sat in a special chair right in front of the priest. At the end of the mass, both the mother and father performed the shoe and tiara ritual, signifying that their daughter was no longer a child, but a fully-grown woman.

I thought of my daughter Hannah, and three years from now, doing the same thing for her. While watching the parents in the audience witnessing the event, I imaged what was going through their minds: perhaps remembering the day when she was born, or when she learned how to walk, the first day in kindergarten, high school....

It was the last day of her childhood. Whatever they thought, it must have been very emotional indeed.

After the church, I accompanied the family to their home and took pictures of them and their loving guests. I took lots of pictures, and was impressed with with the love and harmony that surrounded me. It reminded me of the good things of life, of which, we often fail to acknowledge and fight for: closeness, love and harmony within our family. I had a great time.

Thanks for reading.

Hans.

Thinking Stuff

Becoming a full-time photographer requires a particular discipline, a sense of direction, and the desire and willingness to work hard in getting what is desired. Kind of like swimming against the current. It requires thinking.

It is true that no too many people practice the art of conscious thinking. What do I mean by that? Answering that question is the purpose of this post.

There are two kinds of thinking. The first one is the processing the information that is presented to us without any sort of effort in our part, like when we watch a movie. We see things and we come up with meanings and never question whether those decisions were right for us or not.

The second one is conscious thinking. Where we take everything that is presented, and examine all its details. Conscious thinking entails being awake and aware. It is the process of asking and answering questions.

By asking better questions, we can come up with answers that can empower us.

If you hate your job, instead of feeling sorry and waiting for things to change or somebody to quit or die (joke), ask yourself: what can I do to make this thing better? How can I get a better job? What sort of things can I do to move forward, etc. And wait and see, to your amazement, how everything that you needed to know comes up.

My question was, what I can do to make my career as a professional photographer a little bit more real?

One answer that came up was to file a fictitious business name, or "doing business as" It's just any sort of name other than your real name that you use to conduct business. To open a business checking account, banks need that little piece of paper. So last week, I went down to the court house and I filed for my fictitious name "The Golden Mile Productions" and this week I plan to open my first business account!

Thanks for reading.

Hans.

CAMERA TYPES...

I was born in the Dominican Republic; in a tiny little town known then as Salcedo (It has been renamed: Hermanas Mirabal). The Catholic temple shown here is the town's tallest and most important structure. It's symbol.

Since very early on, I was exposed to the world of photography through my mother. She loved taking pictures of us.

She married my father at fifteen years of age. Had her first daughter Maribel before 16. Biembenida came second at 18, me at 20, and finally my younger sister Rosa at 26. Most of my early memories of her smiling face are of her holding a tiny 110 camera that she used to take our pictures. An extremely popular 16mm point and shoot camera of the 70s and early 80s.

When I formed my own family in the late 90s, I followed the tradition and bought myself a consumer-grade 35mm camera. I took hundreds of pictures. I believe I was influenced by my beautiful mother to do just that. And I did. Anxiously recording everything for later days.

There are many camera types. The best known ones are the digital point and shoot cameras that come in all colors and mega pixel sizes. Those replaced 35mm film consumer-grade bodies of of the late 80s and 90s. They are called point and shoot because all you have to do is point and shoot, and you have your picture.

Other more advanced models are within the category of pro-consumer and professional. They come with better optics, and more buttons that allow more freedom for creative control. However, they are built with fixed lenses and do not provide as much creative freedom as the lesser known but more advanced SLR's bodies. SLR refers to Single Lens Reflex. What this just means is that what you see through the viewfinder or screen is what the lens is actually seeing, as opposed to the consumer grade 35mm ones that had one hole for the viewfinder, and one for the lens. SLR's best feature is the freedom using interchangeable lenses of different angles and lengths. This is the ultimate creative control.

There are several types of SLRs digital cameras. The professional SLR comes with a full-frame, 35mm sensor. They call them like that because most consumer-grade digital cameras on the market have a sensor size much more smaller than 35mm. To a digital camera, a sensor is what records the image. Because the technology is relatively new, that little electronic, light- sensitive piece of equipment is the most expensive part in the camera body. The bigger it is, the more expensive the camera.

Similar to a film camera, the size of the film is what tells you what format the camera is. A 35mm film SLR (or full sensor) camera is the standard professional format found on the market today. There are other formats, like the medium format camera, which is widely used in studio photography, and which film size/sensor is much larger than the 35mm one. A large format camera is the type of camera that has an 8x10 sensor/film size, and is mostly used for architecture and landscape photography.

Last but not least, regardless of what is said about which camera is best: the one that takes the picture is you. Our ability to see light and capture the best moment is what makes you and me a photographer. A camera is just an instrument, like a piano or a violin. Who we end up admiring is the one that took the picture.

Thanks for reading.

Hans Gonzalez.

Action and Reaction...

This blog is about my experience of becoming a full-time photographer. The process of having the guts, the discipline, dedication, determination and vision of setting a very meaningful goal, and see it come to fruition.

The last four years have been very rocky and confusing for me. My marriage of eight years ended sadly. Because of my subsequent depression and the worst recession since the last Great Depression, I was laid off from a job that I loved and cared for. Many people, familiar with my pictures, advised me to become a full-time photographer. In the middle of so many frustrations, and sudden life-changing events, I found comfort in knowing that I could make this enjoyable hobby, my main source of income.

However, I lost focus. I made the mistaken of thinking that being a photographer, was only about developing a good eye, and taking wonderful, breath-taking pictures. I did not set any goals, and spent most of my time, traveling to the Dominican Republic, and spending money like a lunatic. I did enjoy most of it, met a lot of wonderful people, and visited many wonderful places. It was all very new to me. However, I began to feel lack and desperate about my situation. I didn't have any job, and my back accounts were quickly drying up. I pushed a lot of people away, got another job, and the photographer career was put on hold. I said to myself: I have to figure things out. What I did was, to quit.

Everything I am experiencing now is the result of my actions. My emotions. My decisions. My limiting beliefs, the stories. Even though I knew that I was responsible for my own life. I couldn't possible make the connection and let feelings of frustration and confusion to dominate my thinking. Every action has a reaction. My inability to see the predict the reaction, or think about the consequences of my actions, brought me to a place where I had no power. Those who know me, know that I am always preaching about psychology, about philosophy. About the why of things. But the truth is, I wasn't practicing what I preached. I was extremely unauthentic about everything. It has to stop.

Attaining goals, is the simple process of setting them on paper, working on them, and see them realized. I will share with you that experience. Thanks for reading.

Starting and finishing...

This project is about becoming a full-time photographer. I started seriously liking photography when I bought my first SLR Canon camera. A 6 mega pixel camera that my friend Roberto told me to purchase back in 2004/5. I met Roberto in 1997, when we worked together at mall in Down Town Miami. His main area is nature photography. Throughout the years, he has been able to capture some of the most amazing animal shots I have ever seen. His love for birds, cats, lions, tigers and gorillas is easily identified by just looking at his photos (robertoanil.com).

Although I also love nature, but by living in New York, I have to say, my exposure to the animal kingdom is limited to the summer time, when the Bronx Zoo is in full swing, or when I take a plane and get out of the cold weather. Therefore, my main focus is mostly people.

I believe that life is full of magical moments that, if we fail to capture them, it is as if they didn't happen at all. And photography is a great way to freeze those moments and really enjoy them for all eternity. The most amazing pictures we have seen are moments frozen in time. Capturing those moments is the most fascinating aspect of my passion for photography.

I embarked on becoming a full-time photographer. I have a long road ahead, but I promise you that it will be done. And in the process, I will share with you the experience.

Thanks.

Using the light meter with studio lights

Hi, I heard recently that the signature of a professional photographer is mostly the kind of light that he/she uses. Everyone knows that using a light meter is essential in studio photography, but, even know I knew that, I didn't quite understood the whole significance of it. Last Sunday, I decided to try to do it right. Using 4 lights. I metered the main light at f/11, using a shutter speed of 200 and an ISO of 100. the fill light, I set it to f.5.6, and the two background light (my main problem zone) to f16. (both higher than the main light) The reason that I set the background lights to f/16 was because I was using a white background, and everyone knows that to make a white background really appear white, one has to over expose it 1.5 stops higher than the main light.

My friend Armando modeled for me for the shoot. Armando is the brother of my friend Vincent, which I met back while I was attending Baruch College back in 1994. Armando wishes to become a very successful actor, and I hope that the pictures help him accomplish just that.