We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Diego Dominguez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Diego, appreciate you joining us today. One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

As it happens with most everything in life, it’s all about building value through your career. You have to increase your quality and learn new techniques. You have to adapt, you have to innovate, but what brings you money is above all consistency. Once the wheel starts moving it has inertia that makes your business keep going and growing no matter what, except, of course, catastrophic events or a lack of any of the mentioned above. I am an adventure and I am always looking for something new and exciting, which adds some value to my services, but it mostly reduces my client base. If I were to start over, Id have been more consistent.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started as an advertising photographer before moving into video, but I’d say I am probably one of the top Yoga and Meditation video content creators and a visual artist if I had to summarize my career. I have been the DP -and often edited- hundreds of shootings in several countries, mostly in Spain, Latin America, and the US. And yet, if you take a look at my website or look me up on google, it will be hard to find my name. Right now 99% of my shootings belong to one of the big online players, plus, Yoga shootings tend to look very similar and don’t make for a very exciting reel. That said, there is a very elaborate science behind it, and I can say with confidence that I master it.

I am also a visual artist that combines motion graphics, 3D, and still photography to create pieces around two subjects: Identity and change.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice

I believe in NFTs 100%: let’s try to shed some light here first:

I know blockchain technology is controversial, primarily because it’s linked to cryptocurrency, which is understandable. You hear blockchain and immediately think of bitcoin, altcoins, and speculation.
But blockchain goes way beyond that. Its technology allows for a decentralized -in other words, tamper-proof: can’t be altered, controlled, or changed in any way) data flow. And images are data.

>It frees us, creators, from intermediaries. If you have been in the position of having to print and frame an entire collection only to share 50% of the profits with the gallery, you know what I am talking about.

>It gives you information and profits over the value of your art in the market. Each time your art gets sold again, you get a fraction of that sale. And you get to decide the % when you first mint your pieces.

>It is 100% traceable

Right now, I am part of an NFT exhibition in Madrid, inside PHE, the most prominent and influential photo in Spain. We have hosted it in OVR, one of the big players in the metaverse and arguably nr 1 in Augmented Reality. You can visit the show where it is hosted or experience it remotely. OVR’s technology frees you as an artist from the spatial constraints and the immutable nature of printed images. It opens the door to include other media such as video, 3D, audio, and performances. The sky is the limit.

We could also talk about the condition of photography itself. It is dead if you ask me, but that would be an entirely different conversation-

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Creating itself has to be rewarding for you if you want to be an artist. The very act of creating is the goal in itself. Whenever I find or pick an idea and turn it into the image I am trying to make, that´s what gives me more pleasure.

True, you also need to make money if you want to be a professional artist -AKA “engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime”. But let’s try a little game here, let’s remove the money factor from the process and presume for a moment that you already have everything you need and want. If under those conditions you don’t get the call and the pleasure out of the pure process of creating, I´d say you are not an artist or creator, and it was just a job for you.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.diegodominguez.com
• Instagram: diegodominguezcom