We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful David Valdez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with David below.

David, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Learning an art is not something that happens quickly. I’ve enjoyed taking pictures my whole life, but I haven’t had a tremendous amount of formal training. The way I fill a frame is certainly influenced by being a lifelong geek for film and comic books. I’d like to think my photos blend aspects of beautiful cinematography and dynamic action of comic book art. I’ve learned primarily by doing. A lot of times I’ve felt a sort of creative paralysis because I can’t imagine every detail before I start a project. I’ve gotten better at telling myself, “Just start doing! You’ll figure it out as you go.” This applied to learning how to use a camera, learning how to pose figures and learning how to use lighting (amongst many other aspects).
It’s so hard to say what skills are most essential. I feel like I have a wide variety of skills, but I’m not particularly great at any of them. lol.

David, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

About ten years ago I started collecting toys of my favorite characters and used Instagram as a way of sharing and connecting with others who were like minded. I stumbled upon some toy photographers whose work was so creative and artistic. It opened up my mind to the possibility of using my love of photography and action figures to feed my insatiable need for a creative outlet. I’ve worked on projects for a few different toy companies, but mostly I sell prints of my own photos. I’m proud of the work I’ve done for Hasbro and Lego, but I’m also proud that I’ve found a way to bring to life so many of the characters I’ve been a fan of throughout my life.
If you browse my gallery of over 12,000 images you’re sure to find something you’ll connect with.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I feel lucky to have the audience that I do. I built a modest following early in the days of toy photography and Instagram when the algorithms weren’t such a big issue. If you want to build a social media presence today, unfortunately you need to follow those algorithm trends and gimmicks. Stop following your creative instinct and thinking about building from a marketing perspective. Latch on to what’s popular at the moment. Also, engaging with as many others as possible and maintaining a positive attitude will help.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I’m driven by a need to create. Photography has been the product of this, but there are so many different ways to create new things for my photos. I love taking an action figure and painting it to look just a little more realistic. I love making 3d models and learning 3d printing to add new aspects to my photos. I love building dioramas to add more realism to a scene. I love using water, snow, dirt, dust, smoke and pyrotechnics to bring a scene to life. I love that some people see my work enjoy it enough to hang my creation on their wall.

Contact Info:

• Website: fathersfigures.com (under construction)
• Instagram: instagram.com/fathersfigures
• Facebook: facebook.com/fathersfigures
• Twitter: twitter.com/fathersfigures

Image Credits
All photos captured by David Valdez aka Father’s Figures