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

Hi Ena, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

The way I ended up working as a creative is interesting. During my teenage years I used to be part of a folkloric ballet and we would travel across my home country performing dance shows, that ended when I started college as I had to leave my city and live in a college town where I was pursuing my undergraduate degree. During those years I ended up doing my work-study hours at the university’s marketing department and somehow, they gave me a camera to take photographs of their events, they also motivated me to start an online blog and start writing as part of some marketing campaign they were running. I remember that out of all my classes, I only cared about literature and philosophy, although I was rather good in accounting. By the time I finished my undergraduate degree I was fascinated by the creative field, mind you, I graduated from business school.

After graduation I decided to travel and do some volunteer work to find some clarity about my professional goals, I was very confused, I only knew I didn’t want to work in the business field, and that was the only thing I knew about back then. After some time traveling, I moved to Mexico and started pursuing a graduate degree on creative visualization, this was like a crash course on all the possible jobs you could have in the creative field, I absolutely loved the academic experience, particularly learning about filmmaking and script writing. After that I was still very thirsty for knowledge as I had just acquire so much conceptual ideas, I wanted to learn something more technical so I studied graphic design, I worked as an editorial designer for some time in Mexico City.

When life delivered me to Miami, I started pursuing a master of fine arts in photography, I know I started late to be serious about photography as a craft, but I wouldn’t change a thing because all the experiences I have had and learned make me who I am, full of curiosity and thirst to learn, and I think my unique perspective on things give me a unique method when putting my vision into reality for a conceptual photoshoot or even a corporate one.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I think I answered part of this question in the last one.
The way I got to the photography industry is fairly recent, around 3 years now, but I’ve been in contact with the creative industry and artistic expression for over 8 years. I am a fine arts and lifestyle photographer, I can either be taking corporate headshots, covering events or developing heavily conceptual photo essays to apply to art calls and exhibitions. I am a freelance graphic designer with a keen eye for contemporary visual styles, and I am semiprofessional folk dancer of Nicaraguan marimba. I want a potential follower or fan to comprehend how valuable is to preserve and appreciate one’s roots, in my case with my folk dance, and to share it with everyone who is interested in learning about foreign cultural expressions. I want a potential client to know how heterogenous and diverse is my vision when producing visual, audiovisual or graphic art.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

In my experience, the most rewarding aspect of having the opportunity to create is to be able to pour myself into my work, to end up feeling absolutely empty so that I can fill up the inspiration cup again and again. I am blessed to be able to express myself in a healthy way, and the bonus part that makes everything have a sense is when my work touches someone and they tell me how understood, loved, or even confused they felt by it, that is what makes everything worth it. Because at an early stage of any artistic career like is mine, a big part is just a deep concern about the future, wondering if this is worth the risk, if I will be able to continue doing it through the years, all hesitation vanishes for two glorious seconds when I receive honest feedback.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

It is rather about internalizing contrasting information and being able to use them alternatively. As I mentioned before, I attended business school for my undergraduate studies. Generally speaking, in the business context the processes are very linear, and they must be executed in a specific order in a timely manner, if step 2 didn’t work I need to go back to step 1 and do it all over to identify where is the error that made step 2 fail. This is the way that I reason the business world and the business thinking.

On another dimension of problem solving, you find design thinking, another set of principles on how to treat a list of tasks in order to provide a result. In design thinking, if step 2 didn’t work I could either leave it there and keep going to step 3 and all the others to learn about the process and then go back to step 2 to make a change; I could also go back to step 1 to revisit the task or redo step 2. The flow of work goes in all directions and that is how a design project develops. By learning about design thinking, I didn’t unlearn the business process. I feel there are situations that require one or the other and I have found very useful to have had the opportunity to learn both at a first hand.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://enacastillo.passgallery.com/client
• Instagram: @by.enaloop
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ena.c.07
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ena-castillo-barillas-521a05291/
• Twitter: https://x.com/enalu2212
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EnaCastilloBarillas
• Other: personal ig: @enalu2212
  nicaraguan folk dance ig: @guardabarranco.folk
  nicaraguab folk dance fb: https://www.facebook.com/guardabarranco.folk

Image Credits

All images are mine – ©Ena Castillo-Barillas