A Soul Hunter by Nagore Tamayo

This article originally appeared on Grryo.

About three years ago I created an Instagram account and started taking photos with my mobile phone. This was my first contact with photography, or at least the first time I was exposing my photos to the world. At that time, I thought I would probably get bored soon and look for something different, but when I found myself expressing different emotions and feelings through photography and discovered this new visual language, I knew it was just the start…

When I got my first reflex camera two years ago, I definitely felt in love with photography and my camera became part of me, so I take it with me everywhere I go. You never know what you will find out there! Sometimes I just wait for something special to happen and other times something special finds me. I just want to be ready when that happens.

I consider myself a “soul hunter” who enjoys street photography, street portraits and creative photography. Everything which is spontaneous and dynamic automatically grabs my attention. Something similar happens with street portraits: that moment when you suddenly get your target looking at you and you get a raw emotion is priceless.

When I take a photo I wonder what that person’s life is like; what’s the story behind that scene or behind that look. I like to imagine that whoever looks at my photos thinks about those questions too…

From time to time, when I’m not in “hunting mode”, I enjoy exploring the creative side of photography. To me, creative photography is about finding a way of translating an idea or my view about a given concept into a photograph. It is also a good way of keeping inspiration alive and finding new challenges. When you can’t go out there to discover new places and people to take photos to, why not create them yourself? Some of my pictures are taken at home, in a little room which I call my “creative corner”. A reading lamp, a tripod, my camera and imagination is all I need to satiate my photography thirst.

Photography has certainly changed the way I see the world. As my Instagram’s bio says: “Beauty is in the ordinary things you see every day”. I like challenging myself to get something beautiful from places, people and/or objects around me in my day to day. Trying to find beauty anywhere around me is kind of a romantic exercise that has helped me educate my eyes. However, I must admit that travel photography provides very unique and exotic moments and opportunities to take wonderful photos too, so you will find travel photographs in my gallery too.

When it comes to editing, you’ll see that most of my pictures are black & white. I think black & white helps isolate the subject and get the focus on the right spot, although in the end, it is all about the light. Even though I have a personal preference towards black and white, I try to get out of my comfort zone and post color photographs as well.

As an amateur photographer, I’ve learned all I know so far by experience. I have listened to different conferences around photography but never took any class. I have also had the chance to participate in several group photo exhibitions. A few years ago, if someone would have told me that I would be exhibiting my work, I wouldn’t have believed it. Self-learning is something I really enjoy and I’m looking forward to continuing growing my skills and expressing myself through photography.

Nagore is a self-taught photographer and a tireless learner. From the Basque Country but based in Barcelona, she enjoys capturing the street life of the places she visits and the soul of its citizens through street portraits. She re-discovered herself through photography a few years ago and hasn’t stopped taking photos since then. In love with black and white photography, she loves playing with the light and the shadows to reinforce the message she wants to transmit with her photos. Besides photography, she enjoys singing and playing acoustic guitar, an evasion of her day to day work as a Computer Engineer.