We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jose Sepulveda. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jose below.
Jose, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?
The legacy I am hoping to build with photography is unlocking peoples creativity as well as finally having people understand my mind and where it goes. I never considered myself an artist or creative person until I started to create concepts that resonate with the things I see, the music I listen to, and the things I feel. With that I want to create and open and safe space for the people i shoot with where they can express the feeling they want to create but also feel confident to share if i’m slightly going off track and love to give them creative freedom. I’d like to think during my shoots I pay attention to people and their needs, be it water, a break, or some different direction. I hope people leave interactions with me thinking that they had a great time and that it was impossible not to laugh or enjoy it. I hope i’m remembered for my empathy and ability to connect with people of all backgrounds.
Jose, 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?
Hello my name is Jose Genaro Sepulveda and I’m a photographer from the San Fernando Valley. I’ve been doing photography for about 6 years now. I think my transition to photography makes alot of sense now considering I come from a music background. I was a musician for over 10 years and I always had a huge fascination for Album covers. It’s something I always thought was random about me but I guess now it makes sense. My current passions is shooting portraits, specifically music photography. It all started with shooting friends in local bands. Huge shoutout to my friends in bands like Rec Affect, Cooli Ooli, and No Johns for helping me get started and build my portfolio.. With the confidence of shooting for them I was able to meet amazing people and devolop strong networks that essentially led me to shoot for bigger bands including bands of my dreams like Movements, Inner Wave, and Heart to Gold. This year I also shot for my first big festival Besame Mucho in Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and most recently in Austin, Texas. where I had the opportunity to take photos of Mana, Cafe Tacvba , Hombres G and so many more. I think what sets me apart from most concert photographers is that I come from a music background and so I have a pretty good understanding for the music and for live performance am I able to have a good idea of catching when this big, picture perfect moments are going to occur.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Very recently actually is a really good example of a story of resilience. In the last week of February I had my car broken into. They took mine and my friend Rudy Zamoras backpacks. My backpack had my laptop, hard drive, mouse, agenda, pretty much everything I use to edit. In Rudys backpack he had his camera and lenses. It was a big blow for us financially and the invasion of privacy alone was something really hard to go through. The process became increasingly frustrating when me, Rudy, and our friend Alex took the time to essentially investigate this person and within two days we were able to find out who he was, where he works and confirmed he was trying to sell some of our gear on offer up. The increasing frustration of finding all the proof of this person and the police not really helping us with it. There was no follow up, no further investigating, they haven’t even returned our calls regarding the matter. We felt like we had to take matters to our own hands. We ended up launching a Gofundme and felt an incredible sense of support from friends, family, and just genuine fans of our work. With the money we were able too cover the cost of a new camera for Rudy, hard drives for me and pretty much all of our gear. It definitely was hard for the mental just because it felt like starting all over. There as an emotional loss when it comes to realizing all of my work since 2022 is now completely gone but overall I learned alot about my resilience because of this experience. Me and Rudy even joked that we must really be making our transition from Amateurs to professionals considering that alot of our photography inspirations share horror stories of their gear being stolen. I’ve grown alot personally and professionally compared to when I first started doing this.
How’d you meet your business partner?
Our team 85mil. productions started about 2 years ago. The original cofounders consist of me and my friend Alejandro Ambriz. I’ve know Alejandro since middle school but we officialy became friends in 9th grade when we both joined marching band. I was a tuba player and Alex played Saxophone. We were very good friends all of high school and had our own friend group established. When Alex went off to college at UC Merced we disconnected just a little bit. We’d check in on each other here and there but naturally not as much just due to distance. At this point Alex had picked up photography and was sharing landscape photos as well as some portraits. I picked up on the hobby a year later and Alex did a really great job at taking me under his wing where I would learn alot of what I know from him. We both began booking little gigs at that point for about a year to which we then decided and agreed to collaborate together and create 85mil. Productions. A year later we added our 3rd member Rudy Zamora who is an excellent photographer/videographer. We also grew up knowing Rudy through middle school/high school and when we saw his work and know his big energy would be great for our company we asked him to join.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.85milproductions.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sepulveda_takesvisuals/
Image Credits
All photos taken by Me Headshot taken by Alejandro Ambriz