Meet Oswaldo Cepeda | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Oswaldo Cepeda and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Oswaldo, how do you think about risk?
My entire career was a huge risk and the biggest risk I’ve taken in my life. I moved to California in the start of a pandemic with $600 in my bank account. Taking that risk and seeing where it led me has taught me to not be so afraid of risk as long as you have a plan. There’s going to be risk in everything you do especially in the business world but often time you’ll quickly learn that those big risks are the ones that give you the biggest rewards. If I would have avoided risk and not left my comfort zone I would have still been stuck in my hometown working a job I hated. Learning to be uncomfortable and being okay taking risks will take you wherever you need to go in order to succeed.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I label myself mostly as a photographer but I dabble in multiple mediums and have recently been leaning more into video work. My photography however was what helped me gain the platform that I have now. When I first got into photography in the beginning of the pandemic, all the photo work I would see that was trendy at the time just didn’t look “good” to me. It looked good visually from an objective standpoint but lacked any emotion and was very soulless in a sense. I wanted to create photos that resonated more with people and had more emotion and mood to them and I think this is why I was able to gain traction quickly. I wasn’t just copying what was already popular. I was doing something that was different and that helped me stand out. While everyone was trying to post photos with perfect retouching, ultra sharpness, bright colors, and daylight – I wasn’t retouching at all, my photos had a softness to them, the colors I used were very simple and no overly vibrant, and all my photos were taken with artificial moody lighting similar to old paintings. Of course when I first started there wasn’t much traction but things started to pick up exponentially after about six months once I really started to learn social media. My work was getting reposted and reshared like wildfire. This sudden boom in attention caught the eyes of people who were looking for something different and this is when I began to take on clients. I took a huge risk leaving my life behind and moving 2,000 miles away to pursue my photography. I didn’t know anyone in California, I didn’t have any prior experience in the field I was going into, and I didn’t have any money in my savings to fall back on. Apart from the normal struggles everyone faces I’m also a DACA recipient which threw extra hurdles at me when it came to opening bank accounts and being able to work in general. During the pandemic there was such a delay in the US immigration system that DACA recipients were at risk of not having their status renewed in time which would of severely impacted my ability to work and could of derailed my entire life. Needless to say the beginning of my journey was a very stressful time in my life but it paid off and I learned a lot of good stress management. It took a lot of work and I had to maneuver through a lot of obstacles to build up my business from nothing to where it is now but the first step was to just try and make it happen. Had I never taken that first step and tried I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
My closest friend from back home actually visits a few times of year. The cool thing about LA is there’s just so much to do both in the city and within a few hours of it. I’m more of a nature person myself so we’ve gone to the sand dunes a few hours from LA, the desert just on the other side of the mountains, and the beaches up in Malibu. Since I’m also into the arts the broad and other art museums in downtown are also a place I I would take friends to. The Griffith observatory and the Getty are somewhere in the middle where it’s artsy but also very nature oriented and also other spots I love. The food in LA is great anywhere you go so we just open up google maps and try to dine at local places near wherever we are. I personally love to support smaller business and will try to eat at mom and pop shops over chain restaurants or gentrified places that charge $15 for toast. I’m not much of a drinker so I don’t go out to bars much but just like food places there also isn’t a shortage of cool bars and places to drink at in LA.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
People that helped me a ton when I was beginning my career was my older sister and my mother. They were the most supportive people you could ever want in your corner. My older sister works in finance and helped me out with the basics of banking that’s needed to freelance and I would answer any questions I had regarding money. My mother supported me and always reminded me that if things didn’t work out I could always move back home so having that peace of mind was comforting because I knew I had something to fall back on if things didn’t work out. Another person who helped jump start my career was my amazing girlfriend who was my model when nobody would want to model for me. This helped me perfect my craft and attain the style and look that I’m known for and it’s all because she saw how passionate I was and was fully supportive of me pursuing a career in art.

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