Today we’d like to introduce you to Marixa Andrade.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Photography was a great coincidence in my life. I started in 2004 when my uncle gave me a small point-and-shoot-film camera, which I used to experiment with natural landscapes. Since I lived in Colorado, I was very inspired by my surroundings. At the time, I was also undergoing a very deep depression and photography, although with a very rudimentary camera, was a way of getting to know myself, through self-portraiture, and my surroundings.
Eventually, I built up confidence and started to share some of my self-portraits and landscape portraits in photography forums, such as DeviantArt and Flickr. Making photos had always been a hobby of mine, and I was very fortunate to have had people along my life who gifted me at least 3 SLR’s in my life. I think it had been their way of telling me, indirectly, I had some sort of talent. It was not until 2014, when I was getting married, that I jokingly started to say that I was going to raise funds for my wedding by taking people’s portraits… and so it began, photography as a business!
Since I told you I used to be part of an online photographer’s community, I simply adopted the same avatar name I had used for those forums, Marx, which is a variation of my name, Marixa. I included “Viva La” in front of “Marx” because of all the self-portraiture I had done in my first years of photography as a way of discovering and healing myself. Viva La Marx Photography is really a way of saying to be confident and celebrate you and your stories!
Has it been a smooth road?
No, it has certainly been a challenging road. At first, I feel like I had a lot of ideas for photography. I had concepts, I had moods, despite the fact that I had no education in fine art photography. So, I was able to put those concepts into portraits, but I was unhappy with the technical part of photography; exposure, light. Then as I got better cameras, I was getting better at exposing, but my ideas and concepts were diminishing.
One of the struggles, I believe, is comparing yourself to others and trying to achieve what they are doing, when you should be working on finding out what drives you!
As of lately, I have really tried to dig into my past interests, what got me started into photography, the things, the colors, and the people that inspire me to create great portraits. I believe this is the key to creating unique portraits and perfecting one’s craft. I want to create portraits that are meaningful, intentional, and have emotional content that transcends time.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Viva La Marx Photography story. Tell us more about the business.
As I explore what drives me as an artist, Viva La Marx Photography has become more about seeking those who celebrate their culture, their individuality, find a degree of spirituality in nature, love color, and find that capturing real organic moments, instead of mechanical poses is important to them.
I also like posing, don’t get me wrong—we all like that looking at the camera portrait, but I would say even then I would like to capture your real expressions, should that be a serious you, a laughing you, a pouty you, whichever you may be.
I am driven by moments in your life, so I really capture anything ranging from newborns to weddings. There are happy and sad events in our lives, and I suppose because I got started into photography at a very sad and anxious time in my life, I truly believe photography can be an expressive outlet for others, so I strive to be a photojournalist, you can trust to capture your life.
My specialty is that when you hire me, I expect to not only capture those moments, but also transfer them into tangible items, in the form of books, canvases, and heirloom boxes. We live in a time in which we take thousands of photos with our phones, our point-and-shoot cameras, our DSLR’s, and ask yourself how many times do you actually print any of those memories? I’m finding out, hardly anyone prints these days, which I find unfortunate for your future family generations!
I want to be able to provide the service of design and printed heirlooms for your family to enjoy at gatherings, every day after work, when you feel happy when you feel nostalgic when you realize you already have grandchildren and they want to see you when you were young!
Viva La Marx Photography is about investing in experiences, and investing in those memories, intangible items and in real time, not on social media or digital files that corrupt over time, so this is why my collections include complimentary gift prints from the get-go!
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I really do wish the photography industry shifts into printing again, since I do feel a great concern for children growing up today and not having any of their photographs printed.
In my opinion, it’s useless to have all this technology when all your memories are online, computers, drives, and some sort of screen, which I feel loses that human touch and interaction as far as memories go.
I understand if you think printed photography is obsolete, but I also think it’s important to question how reliable technology can be in preserving our memories, and most importantly, questioning if you are actually looking back at those stored photos.
Through printing, I truly believe the “over-saturated” factor is eliminated (as we sometimes feel overwhelmed by the amount of photos we have produced on our cell phones, for instance) and we are able to focus on only those images that are important for your family generation and those to come after you!
Pricing:
- Portrait sessions start at $365.00 and include 6 mounted gift prints in 2 different sizes
Contact Info:
- Website: www.vivalamarxphotography.com
- Phone: 281-677-0934
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vivalamarxphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vivalamarxphotography/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/vivalamarx?lang=en
- Other: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+VivaLaMarxPhotography
Image Credit:
Ivan Rocha, Kandi
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