Today we’d like to introduce you to Victor Peña.
Victor, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up playing sports and I never really cared for the way a lot of the action shots of me on the field turned out and in high school was always trying to tell the yearbook photographers where they should have been standing to get a better angle. They’d always tell me it wasn’t as easy as it looked and if I didn’t believe them, I should try it. So when a football back injury my junior year left me permanently sidelined I needed another class to fill my schedule and decided to take photography. It didn’t take long for me to learn that they were right, it wasn’t as easy as it looked. It was challenging but I loved it. From there, photography became my new favorite hobby, and pretty much everywhere I went I took my camera with me.
After graduating from high school, I enrolled in the Art Institute to study graphic design. Once I completed my degree, I found a job at a small local publication where I was able to combine my design and photography skills, then eventually moved on to working as a graphic artist at a print shop. I still continued to devote a lot of my time to photography, though, even though it wasn’t part of my “real” job.
I’ve always been a fan of 94.5 The Buzz and the Rod Ryan Show. One night while at an event being promoted by the radio station (camera in tow, of course), someone from the station approached me and asked if I would mind sending in some of the pictures I’d taken that night for them to post on their website. I’d taken pictures at lots of their events before, but it had never occurred to me to submit them to the station. So I did, and it was an awesome feeling, seeing pictures I took posted on their website. From there on out, any time I took pictures at one of their events I would stay up late editing the photos to have them into the station before 6 a.m. the next morning. After a while they started reaching out to me, offering photo/press passes to cover concerts and other events for them.
Around that same time period was also when I shot my first wedding. My wife and I had arrived for the wedding of a family friend a little early and were waiting for it to start when the mother of the bride frantically approached me saying the photographer had canceled but she’d heard I took pictures for a radio station and could I please cover the wedding? Since my camera goes with me just about everywhere I had it in the car, so I was able to help them out. I’m not going to lie, it was the scariest day of my life because it was completely unexpected, I was totally unprepared, and a wedding is something you don’t even want to THINK about screwing up. Luckily, everything worked out fine. They were happy with the pictures, and I got a lot of referrals from that. Since then I’ve shot several weddings and I still get a little nervous because it’s such an important day and you don’t want anything to go wrong, but overall I love it. I’d say that weddings and concerts/events are my two favorite things to shoot.
Today I’m still working at as a graphic designer at a print shop (designing mostly t-shirts, which is awesome), but I’m happy to say that photography is now more of a “real” job too.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Getting here hasn’t exactly been smooth-sailing, and at times still isn’t, but there’s been a lot of improvement. I believe there’s this misconception that when you work for yourself it’s all fun and games and that you have more leisure time than when you work for someone else, which for me couldn’t be further from the truth. Photography is a competitive field and just continues to be more so with advances in technology and camera quality and accessibility. So to stand out, you’ve got to prove yourself, and you do that by consistently being reliable and delivering high-quality work on time, every time. In the beginning that meant showing up at every station event or concert after working a full 8-hour day, coming home after midnight, downloading and editing photos until 2 a.m. and barely getting 4 hours of sleep, just to turn around and do it again the next day.
As exhausting as it is, it’s rewarding too, especially when you’re attending concerts, getting a behind-the-scenes view, meeting bands, and being recognized for your work on one of the biggest morning radio shows in the city. But there’s a downside to that too. It’s a lot of time away from your family. While I was out “proving” myself my wife was taking care of our kids, working, and going to back to school (Go Coogs!). We hit some kinda rough patches with me working all the time and I ended up taking hiatus from all the concerts and events for a bit and focused on putting in the time I’d been missing out on with my family. It’s still a balancing act, but it’s a lot easier now.
Please tell us more about your work. What do you do? What do you specialize in? What sets you apart from competition?
I’m a photographer and graphic designer. I can’t say that I have a “specialty” because both design and photography-wise I do some of everything, kind of a jack of all trades in both fields. However, when it comes to photography I’m probably best known for concert photography, although wedding photography is coming in at a close second. In the graphic design world, I’d say I’m known as the guy who makes t-shirts.
One of the things I’m most proud of is the diversity of my portfolio. I’m always up for the opportunity to photograph or design something new and don’t shy away from anything.
Because I’m also a graphic designer, I think I sometimes take pictures with a slightly different state of mind – like in my head I’m designing a brochure or advertisement, or thinking about how a picture might look laid out on the cover of a magazine, or on a billboard. I see this as an advantage because I’ve ended up with some pretty interesting shots that I might not have taken had I not been considering future design possibilities.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
That’s hard to say. I guess if anything, I wish I had really started pushing it sooner when I was younger so I could have been more established and doing less grunt-work before having a family.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www,imagestudio47.com/
- Phone: 713-557-3066
- Email: imagestudio47@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imagestudio_47/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ImageStudio47/
Image Credit:
Victor Peña Personal Photo – Kayleigh Davis; All other images by Victor Peña
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