Putting things in perspective

 A friend of mine recently told me that everywhere you go, every spot that you glance at and every experience that you live is full of lessons to be learned. Every one of us carry a history on our backs that determines the way we're gonna look at these lessons, and the way we are gonna react towards them, so all of us can imagine in our own way, the kind of lessons we will be learning along the way. However, what we are not told, is that some of those lessons will catch us off guard and will be nothing that we had thought of before.

I started 2022 pretty much skeptical. New Year's Eve felt like any other evening. I was playing videogames and when the clock hit 12, I went to hug my mom and then went straight to bed. The course of the following days would be pretty demotivating since my mind would start to focus on negative memories. Feeling like every aspect of my current life didn't mean any glimpse of success, feeling easily disposable from the vast majority of those who I've met in my entire life, not cultured enough, boring, not wealthy enough and of course, not good enough. Then, getting the feeling that it would be just the same in the future, until the day I die. Yes, I had let myself be brought down.

What I didn't know though, was that life was about to slap me in the face and give me a very valuable lesson: A few days ago I was tested positive for Covid.

Not knowing what to do, I sat down in my room staring at nothing, thinking. As an overthinker as I am, my priorities list suddendly rearranged in a new order. I had started to see things more clearly. I realized that I still had the most valuable asset in my life: My health, and that I could do anything I wanted as long as I was healthy. 

- Alright! - I said - I understand now! I will start focusing on the things that will make me grow as a person, I promise. 

And I learned my lesson. I've been in lockdown planning on things, looking forward to every activity that I'm gonna do once I'm Covid free. The pieces that I'm gonna paint, the sports that I will play, the journeys that I'm gonna venture on. There's still plenty to do in this life, there's plenty of forgiveness to give, there are plenty of experiences to yet live and there are plenty of bad feelings to make peace with. Anyway, almost 11 PM here, time for my meds and to go to bed.

My 'Social' Dilemma

I have updated and renewed and changed this blog so many times because perhaps I don't have a clear path in life. I got rid of all my posts regarding Fashion Photography and I'm currently jumping into new seas. Ok, maybe this has been a process that has been going on since almost the beginning of the year, but still.

Anyway, welcome (once again) to my blog which has been active since 2004, and has seen a lot of evolution throughout the years. I must say that right now, with what's going on with the world these days, my life as a digital illustrator is not that interesting as the fahion photograher one used to be. At least not yet. Maybe later? Perhaps.

But as there are no interesting experiences in my life right now (besides from sitting and painting) I realized I can also write about things that have been stuck in my head. So I will open this kind of articles kinda called 'head scratchers" because some virtual experiences make me do that exactly. 

The Social Dilemma. Focusing on the only social media I've been posting my artwork to, Instagram, have made me experience some new upbringings. I opened my illustration account in the beginning of May and while I thought it wouldn't be such a big deal, the most unimaginable thing happened, at least for me. At the 4 month mark, this account reached its first thousand followers. Also each one of the posts have hundreds of likes which is pretty uncommon to me. 

I must admit, this makes me feel like I'm doing things right, if not admired. I rely on these statements because it is in constant growth. But, there's something that stands out every week and kinda gives me mixed feelings.

Every week, I would receive several comments or direct messages from people requesting that I follow them (given the fact that they do not follow me first), feature them in my stories or to subscribe to their YouTube channels. While I understand I'm not the only one who they do this to and that this is their way to promote themselves, it just makes me cringe a bit.

I don't know but I've never found myself in this kind of situations where I ask random people for a follow, I only do that to friends. And it's not that I don't want to help them, it's just that people will follow you because of the quality of your work and because they genuinely admire you. I only follow friends and artists I truly admire because I want to keep as authentic and as true to myself as possible.

That is what I did, I worked my arse off to achieve a result in my paintings that really makes me happy. I let my work speak for myself, because when somebody follows me because of it, it's really more satisfying because I know I earned that follow. I didn't beg for it.

So fellow artists, I suggest you take priority on your artwork instead. Practice everyday and always learn, there are a lot of tutorials and material to learn from out there. I don't promise to make my own learning material still, but we'll see. Perhaps I could surprise you all of the sudden.

Anyway, with everything I said I hope I made myself clear. I will admire an outstanding artwork way more than an Instagram account with a million followers. Talent beats popularity for me.

Why I left 'that' industry

Yup folks, this is me again. After all these years of writting in this blog claiming that you woud never see any anglicism, I'm pretentiously approaching my english words again. I don't care, or maybe I do. Maybe there are some hard feelings inside of me regarding 'that' industry that force me to take shelter in some language that is not even my own but here I am, to tell my story... and I repeat, after all these years of being delusional, optimistic, portraying this environment as one of a kind, and a very positive one. Dumb I was.

I was 26. I had shot this fashion story that would lead me to instant (non monetary) success. I had arranged the whole thing. I had chosen the clothes, chosen the model, chosen the makeup and the idea. A magazine claimed it its own, even wanting to change the entire picture set which I didn't give in to. I was firm. It had to be my way or no way at all. They understood and later took revenge, because in the course of the following months and years they would seize my photography skills to use them as they pleased. There was a "you're gonna be published in a printed magazine" blackmail. No commission, not even a glass of water offered to me during those shootings. If I needed transportation, it was on me. If I got hungry, it was up to me as well. Little did I know that upon starting to work for other magazines, they were all the same. The person wasn't the value here, not even the photographer. Only the final picture.

Not entirely done with the overwhelming success of the previous photoshoot, a month later I started to coordinate a brand new photoshoot with this makeup artist / hair stylsit pair, a marriage actually. We decided to work on this project for the mere love of art. We had chosen the best of the best, one of the best models, the best styling... and one of the best fashion designers in the city. Although said fashion designer was a friend of mine, I was surprised when he agreed to lend me some of his collections for the photoshoots, since he never lent me any piece unless the photoshoot was for him and his brand, a behavior pattern that lasted to the last moment. I was happy, our project was taking shape and I would finally shoot his clothes for a very personal project, or so I thought. He wanted to be present in the photoshoot. I didn't realize about this until the pictures were published, but the whole photoshoot eventually turned from our art project to a whole campaign for him. The change was so subtle and slow, that we never noticed it. Of course, this was the first of his many antics he passively did to me. Here I will enlist some of them that happened throughout the years:

• In our very last photoshoot I contacted not a model, but a beauty queen who is a friend of mine to model for the pictures. Halfway through the photoshoot he claimed she was not as thin as he wanted, and we cancelled the whole thing. Practically he made me kick her out of there. She scolded me later that day.
• A lady owed him money while he owed me the exact same amount because of some graphic design job I did for him. Since such lady was also a friend of mine, he told me to request the money from her instead. This lady never paid me.
• We had a photoshoot with a male model I had a huge crush on. I did (wrongly) post a picture ahead of time which detonated a bit of this designer's wrath, forcing me to delete it right away. After this incident, such model didn't talk to me for quite a while. 

This designer always acted as my friend though.

Back to the photoshoot which began as a personal art project and ended up being for him, I should give a lot of credit to that one though. Credit because the impact was even stronger than the previous one. My career flew to the stars. There wasn't a single model, brand, fashion designer and makeup artist who didn't want to work with me. I got stalked, I got harrased by people who wanted to exploit my talent. Then, some people from the past who had cut me of at home moment came to the surface. They would start to like my posts, they would start to text me to catch up, followed by a coffee invitation. Naive me would say: "Of course! Are you free next Saturday afternoon???" and that was it, no response. "No my man, actually I have no intentions of spending some time with you, I just wanna say that I have a famous friend" was that invaded my mind some time after those incidents. When my career began to face its decay, I did no longer hear from them.

I played the strong guy towards these incidents. After all, I was too busy living the 'rockstar' life. Being published in magazines (now not only my work, my some magazines would dedicate articles towards my person), travelling overseas to attend personal and work events, being called to represent this famous beauty pageant through my lens, conference lectures, exhibitions. It all made sense to me one day I landed in some mexican city and while claiming baggage, these two guys approach me (which I had seen in the flight looking at me and then gossiping one another) and say: "Are you Diego Fraustro??? OMG, I love your work!!!". That's when I understood the magnitude of what I was doing.

I was so confused but I let myself go. All these events in my life forced me to quit an office job which allowed me to live comfortably, while I was doing my 'artsy' photoshoots on the side with no economical reward, just recognition. It took about a year to completely rely on photography to make a living, which led me to focus on commercial work, not leaving me time or even energy to make personal 'artsy' work. Now, I had nothing to show in my social media that I was proud of, nothing to create and potentially be published in magazines and it had its consequences. The travelling was gone, the conferences were gone, the exhibitions were gone and the fans fulfilled their eyes in other photographer's work, new photographers actually.

However, in October 2018 I was requested to make three final pictures for a new collective exhibition under one certain theme: Icons. I thought: "What is Iconic to me?" and I relied on my digital painting days, a field I could never be as good as I wanted. And I had this painter whose work was pretty iconic to me at that time, but I will only mention her initials: LB. There, all I had to do was a tribute to her since it had been more than a decade that she vanished from the digital art communities due to some personal issues, but I also needed her permission in order to do so. I asked the only lady that I knew was friends with her (a fellow digital artist also) and someone who maybe was still in touch with her. "Hi! Sorry to bother you... I was wondering if you would ask for her permission to do this tribute to her on my behalf...". "No, and I'm tired of people like you looking forward to use me only to get close to her".  I apologized and never talked to her again. All I wanted was some permission, not to get in touch with such artist. I ended up doing something else instead.

By 2019 my photography career was pretty much dead. I had worked with some elites, with some celebrities in the past which made me pretty confident to rise up my fees. People would later complain I was being so expensive, comparing me with the emerging photographers who cheapen down their work. That year I basically made my living as a driver on these new digital platforms. The only things left were my (again) 'rockstar' memories and the beauty pageant.

The breaking point came recently, in the middle of 2020. One of my many Instagram followers misunderstood a story I had posted and directly sent it to my pageant director. I followed that version, maybe because I wanted to be fired but I even plead guilty and defended myself. A lot of people would watch my stories but almost no one would ever participate in the interactive ones. And then this happened, in less than an hour after I posted that story. My pageant director texted me saying she was dissapointed of me. That's when I had enough, I was surrounded and followed by such negative, toxic vibes and decided to shut down that Instagram account. Well, not shut down actually since it holds many years of portfolio, but I logged out entirely of it. Now I use another one, in which I follow people I care about only, not the typical "Instagram Models", "Influencers" and such people I was forced to follow as a fashion photographer. With less than 100 followers on this new one, I'm much much happier.

This breaking point also made me realize and think about all these years of playing strong and and letting myself go within a lot of bad experiences. The fashion cocktails surrounding me with such pretentious fake people, the modelling agency that broke one of my strobe light bulbs and never took responsability of it, the endless amount of people who always wanted to make decisions on my career, the people who wanted to decide my fees, the charity institution that I made a 3 non stop day long photoshoot for to raise funds for them and later on gave me their back when I asked them for a letter because I needed it for an art contest, the VIP dinner party I was invited to only to be seated alone in a small table excluded from the main table, the famous singer whose staff broke one of my light tripods, the popular life coach that stopped talking to me but never let me post his pictures, amonth others.

I'm not intending to play martyr here, but I hope my experience will help someone out there. I don't regret being a photographer though. I went back to digital art and started applying all my photography knowledge into it, finally achieving the results that make me happy. There's a lot much more I have to give, including this blog entry. Now I wonder, what's gonna happen with this blog?