A shot for hope

Boredom, lost, anxiety, depression, and mostly, fear. This were the words defining my “quarantine” confinement. As not everyone here in Mexico I´ve been staying home for a year now, we began believing it will be over in just forty days. It now feels like a lifetime, not knowing what day it is or what month. Covid came and finished to destroy my hopes. Even Christmas, that time of the year that restores me.

I know this has not a lot to do with how I got this photos, but I guess it brings a little bit of context not to the pics but to the feeling I would like to share. So back to the story…

All of my life I’ve been struggling with finding a place where I belong, being the so called “weirdo” by many. Years later I found a place and it was everywhere next to nature, next to animals. So with bright eyes and inspiration all over me I decided and declared that someday and somehow I´d dedicate my life to be next to wildlife and take care of it. I was younger and full of hope at that time, but then I failed on one of my steps, I failed entering vet school twice, so I came with a “solution” If I studied graphic design in a school where photography was involved I could keep track of my dream by specializing in photography, something I love too.

So I’m currently on my last years of school (being online because of Covid) I had an assignment where the teacher asked us to create our professional portfolio including our works of the area we wanted to specialize.

Now this is where the fun begins. Since I love wildlife photography I came with the idea of filling my portfolio whit animal pics. The problem? I didn’t have a lot of that material. Suddenly darkness came to me filling my heart with bad thoughts and a voice whispering this was the end.

After a couple days of being so low, a feeling of hope started to sprout silencing that voice.

Imagine an epic suit up footage here!

Charging the batteries of my camera, plug, wait. Take my camera and “reload” batteries, assemble the lens and dress up felt so EPIC.

Then the hard task, when you’ve been confined at home for so long you forget how to be out and it is scary…

Lucky me I have Fang, my almighty never scared dog friend to help me as always.

This will sound lame but that’s how it felt, my scary crusade was just walking like twenty steps out home to arrive to the lake (called the lily lake). Yes, I live really close to it. Anyways Fang really helped dealing with that weird feeling and social anxiety.

So there was I…fighting a bunch of mosquitos at the very base of the lake walking some steps into the water and holding Fang´s leash, equipped with the ol´ reliable camera and the cheapest of the 300mm waiting for something to happen.

And… nothing impressive was passing by, so I tried some shots at a little female drake duck that I called Patrice. I think I had a great one where Patrice is breaking water tension while, I guess, hunting.

Then, when everything seemed to be lost, a flock of pearl white pelicans arrived and descended over my head, all while I was getting distracted by Patrice. Damn it Patrice!

Suddenly when I started pointing my camera towards them, they appeared to be fighting for a couple or something. At the end I managed to get a bit of that scene.

Before that, Fang and I were amazed. I felt something I haven’t felt for quite a long time, that feeling comes every time I’m close to wildlife, and I don’t want it to ever stop or fade away.

But not everything is happiness in this, when I arrived home and stated the editing process I couldn’t believe it, my work was overexposed. How? Maybe I’m out of practice.

Before crying (Hey! Man cry too) I tried my best to recover as most pics as I could by applying everything I’ve learned at school and at my “job”. Finally, I managed to overcome with this results. I´m satisfied with it.

But most important, I hope these images can make you feel the passion of being behind the camera with incredible creatures (Hell yeah, even ducks are incredible) as I felt it. And never give up on your dreams because otherwise life will be tough and boring.