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

Fernando, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew your brand.

Technically I’ve been taking photos my whole life. I’ve always been fascinated with capturing memories and composing images. I joined the Army and my platoon received orders to deploy to Afghanistan.
Immediately I knew this was gonna be an unforgettable experience so I wanted to document it.
I went to a pawn shop and picked up my first Point and shoot.
I took that camera with me and was lucky enough to photograph my deployment.
I quickly realized that photography is such a powerful figure of speech.
I started taking photos of fellow soldiers, & documented our day to day life.
When we would get attacked I was quick to bring my camera with me.
I learned that I love to capture In-Action photos.
When I got back from the deployment I started hanging around musicians again which then led to me becoming a music photographer..
Eventually I upgrade my camera and start taking my music photography more serious.
Today, I’ve worked with Musicians from all around Texas to document their performances, as well as helping bring a bands’s vision to life. Ive been on set capturing behind the scenes photos and videos, as well as having the chance to film my own music videos for artists.
This year I made the move to New Mexico but I still travel back into Texas to fulfill shoots for my loyal clients. Im in the process in building a new network of people in New Mexico hoping to expand my reach and being able to work with new faces and new opportunities.

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

A lot of the times , my services are used as a way to visually promote their own brand. Whenever I take photos a lot of the times those photos are going to be published on magazines, posters, websites, interviews, and most commonly on social media platforms. I am not the only person who can provide this type of service but a lot of my clientele has openly described me as easy to work, with which is something I take a lot of pride in. I hope to one day work for big industry names and artists.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There was a time that a band had gotten my hopes up and wanted to take me on a full length tour. This was the first big band that I have ever had the opportunity to work with at the time so, naturally I was excited. When I was presented the opportunity I began to change things in my life in order to be able to pursue this dream of mine of being a tour photographer. I almost quit my job in order to do so until last minute I had seen the band announce their tour and had a different photographer in their list. I reached out to the band and they didn’t have enough respect to actually let me know that they were not going to take me on the road with them. This was a huge disappointment because they had been talking to me as if I was going to go on tour with them but ultimately decided to go with another candidate without letting me know. This affected me a lot. I felt very rejected but I wasn’t going to let the situation define me. Fast forward two years from then I’ve gone on tour with several artists and have gotten the opportunity to shoot or other big bands.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Something that helped me build my name was going out to local shows and photographing the local acts. Not only did word of mouth help my name spread but so did social media. I started posting consistently on my Instagram page which also built my reputation. I would take my camera to these local bars and sell my images and videos to the artists that were performing that day. Fast forward a couple of years and I start getting invited to shoot bigger shows and bigger venues.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fernandosphotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fernandovillegas.photos/