Starting my business as full time wedding photographer in July 2014, I was facing some struggles. Been a photographer is a rollercoaster. It is of course an amazing job and opportunity of a lifetime. I love and adore my job. It gave me the opportunity to meet amazing people all along the way. I was lucky enough to document over 170 weddings for the last 6 years and still I would love to take photographs for another decade or more ;).
Been able to document weddings, elopements, love stories, proposals, and even more personal work too, I have also discovered a lot about myself.
When you start your business, you dont really know which direction you should take for your aesthetics, editing, colouring, even using the right words for your communication. It is a challenge. It is also a lot of big failures, of time spending on the computer, looking at all kind of competitors website seeking for the right move to do.

Happily and sometimes, you would face little successes. That is what exactly happened in 2017. I have received an facebook message from the guy behind BodaF conference in Barcelona inviting me to join the biggest photography conference in Europe. At first I have to tell that I did not know what was the reason for.
A couple of days later, an online video appeared and I realised I was selected to be on the last 25/30 people to compete to be the best and unique New Talent 2017.
Bought my ticket with a lot of stress and excitement.

That would have been for me the opportunity to meet colleagues, to learn from my peers and meet new sponsors.

I took it like it was, with no specific expectations, just like a time off in Barcelona before the rush of the wedding season :)

With the days of the conference passing, I have realised the pressure was ON. Lots of people told me that actually had a chance to win the competition and coming to the main entry on the amphitheatre at first I realised the staff working there knew my name. I was shocked. I dont think there is any famous wedding photographers in this world, we dont save life and are per se not very important.

On the evening of the trophy, I started to stress a lot and thought that maybe I should have prepared a “in case if” speech, but after an hour torturing myself I just dropped this idea.
After a very long time waiting for this to finally be on, I finally realised my name appearing on the big screen in front of potentially 600 people.

Super pumped, proud and excited to grab my trophy from the hands of my good friend and mentor Dan O’Day. My “in case if” speech started to appear again in my brain but because of the stress I would say that I could have done better, haha. It just went all the way crazy, I felt very very very uncomfortable, I am usually a very shy person, it is a bit different when I talk about my philosophy, my business, my SEO, my communication because that is the only I know for the last 7 years. But like facing actually 600 people is a very strange experience.

I was invited to talk at the next event BodaF Conference in Barcelona in 2018. Here was the video presentation, and YES they forgot my name on the presentation but who cares.

In 2019 I was invited to run a Keynote.
In 2018, 2019 and 2020 I was invited to be judge for the same competition.

I am now able to face that maybe was communication was aligned, maybe my work was noticed by my colleagues, competitors, maybe I could actually have found my direction, my way of running my business. It has been very telling me much more about my business. It did not give me more photography business but I felt more legit to talk during workshops, conferences, run my own workshops, and see that, in one way, was aiming to right direction :)

For all of this it was ana amazing fact in my small and still fresh career.

Judges for the BodaF New Talent Selection 2017 : Lelia Scarfiotti, Marcos Sanchez and Andre Teixeira from Brancoprata