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The way I photograph in the sessions greatly influences the way I photograph at home and my family. And the opposite also happens.

When I photograph my son and my family, I rarely take intervention.

It’s so natural for me to photograph without interfering, that it seems as though it no longer makes sense to photograph in any other way. I often find myself observing what is happening and I am constantly trying to anticipate the moments, so that I can capture it in a photograph.

Kid and dog by the window looking at outside

I don’t photograph all the time, but in a given situation I experiment and may shoot a lot.

And I’m not constantly with camera in hand. As a matter of fact, my greatest ally today is the iPhone. It’s always in my pocket, it has a a quite decent quality, it’s practical and it’s super easy to share photos with the family. Because I shoot a lot in some situations, a lot of the photos I take are trash, but they are the path I have to take to get to the photograph I want to make. The photographs above is an example of this. I have several shots of this scenario, but the moment I wanted to capture was Francisco’s finger pointing at the dog he was seeing on the street. And that moment lasted only an instant.

baby taking a nap in his stroller
Kids feet coming out of stroller while he takes a nap
Kid inside a bin playing with plastic balls
Kid eating while dog stares at him

At work, when I photograph families, my approach is fundamentally the same: I need to understand where I should place myself considering the light, composition and action that is happening; I need to be very patient and anticipate the moments.

Often times I don’t get to the picture I want. Sometimes I have the great luck to even get something I wasn’t expecting which results in an even better picture.
I need to be constantly in a “problem solving” mode and that’s one of the things I love most about documentary photography.

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