Sebastián Guerrero Cárdenas moved from Mexico to the Rio Grande Valley at an early age. He is a graduate from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in Information Systems and Computer Human Interaction. Photography has always been a part of his life; he picked it up in his junior year of college to cope with stress and school. Guerrero Cárdenas found his passion and a way to express his emotions through this craft. Urban, vintage, and gritty are a few words that best describe his photos. Sebastian recently started working as a photographer for a fashion magazine in Seattle, Washington.
The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
It started off as a hobby but it transformed into a passion and an outlet. It sounds silly but when I went to school the climate was very stressful and there was a lot of tech. It was my junior year when I was getting tired of school. I think it’s one thing to make technical things and another thing to actually create something. I always told myself “I want to do it, I want to do it,” then I was just like “I’m gonna do it for sure.”
My grandpa was a radio host and had a lot of cameras in Mexico. When my dad was around 17 he got his first camera, a Nikon FM. Essentially, those are all the photos of my photo albums. When I was in this phase of my life I told my dad, “I want to be serious with photography,” and I’ve always liked film. My dad said, “Well, you have my camera.” That was the start.
Nikon FM is the most priceless to me; it’s the one I love. The best thing about film or, honestly, in general about photography, is a nice camera is nice to have, but it’s more of what you take a picture of. The good thing about film cameras is that you can buy some cheap ones. I went to Texas Thrift and bought one of my other good cameras for like, $12. I bought another one my last year of college for about $20. It’s a point and shoot, but I use it for, like, a quarter of the photos I take. My need to get more cameras was to get more lenses and aperture sizes. I also needed a camera that I could take with me that wasn’t too big and that I could break and not care.
When it comes down to editing, I try to remember how I felt that day or how the day was. Sometimes I feel like, in my eyes, green is really green and I’ll just edit it and make it until I feel like that’s how I felt that day.For me, it’s what mood I am trying to set and making it match I saw it.
My dad and my grandpa definitely inspire me. All the photo albums I grew up with helped me discover who I was. That’s definitely an inspiration, but some of the other biggest ones are music or movies. I grew up watching so many movies. When I go out and take photos I’m always blasting music. When I’m editing, whatever I’m listening to definitely affects how I perceive the photos.
My last year of college I took a photo history class from WWII to present day. Seeing all those photos, plus many more of my own, taught me so much more than I could learn just going out and taking photos on my own. Every photo you take, you’re not really being unique, because everyone else has already done it before. Even when I thought I was doing something unique, a dude from 1972 already did it. So, I learned from what they did to make my photos better.
Recently, when I was moving to Seattle.
I hate to say it but it always feels weird to pursue passions. I don’t know if it’s because of how I was raised, or the people around me, but it always feels silly to pursue things like this. But I mean, it doesn’t feel silly, I really love it.
For example, if you show up with a film camera to a place and people find out it’s film, they will say you’re a hipster. Once I gained confidence, I ignored my own mental block. If I really want to give it a shot doing photography, I have to do it 100 percent. That’s why I made the website.
Also, this summer I was with a lot of older people. One of them told me, ‘you guys are very lucky because if I could be back in college or where you are at, I would do everything differently. I would pursue the things I loved.’ That’s when I was like, ‘even if I fail or even if I stop in two years, I don’t want to get to two years and not have tried.’
From when I’ve started, I think I’ve gotten better. Because of that, the most recent things are what I enjoy more. I’ve gotten more confident.
This summer I spent 10 weeks in Palau, a country in Micronesia with less than 20,000 people. Getting to take photos there was just so much fun. I have the same mentality with all the photos I take, but my latest one which is “Beluu,” is the one I enjoyed the most, just because it is the most recent.
Well it’s kind of crazy you ask that because, one of my favorite photographers that I found randomly on Instagram, her name is @from_reverie. It’s this girl in Korea who takes, I think, the most amazing photos. I want to take photos like that. I want to feel how her photos make me feel.
When I was going, I wrote her a long paragraph, I put myself out there, I was like “I love your photos, first of all, I am going to be in Korea for a week and it would mean the world to me if I could meet you and it would be amazing if we get to take photos together.”
Essentially, she was like “I am busy but I should be able for Saturday.” Just one day. I was there for a week, and it was my favorite day over there. After talking that week through Instagram, we found out we were talking through google translate. So, when I finally met her, I was shook because we couldn’t talk normally. Luckily, the person I stayed there with, his girlfriend was a model and my friend, he’s an attractive dude. So, even before I met with her, my friends wanted to do a photoshoot. I gave her the models, I was just asking for her time. She took us to a place we picked out of a list and then we had a photoshoot together. We were taking turns leading the two models. She would lead them and then she was like “Now, you go.” She was also someone like me, she was trying to take her photo game to the next level. While still having a career somewhere else. Seeing how she worked, seeing her confidence inspired me a lot. Until this day, even though it hasn’t been that long, we still keep up with each other. I feel like I’ve inspired her photos. We’ve talked about it and I told her, “without a doubt, I want to take photos like you.” That was amazing, that definitely taught me a lot.
Near the end of my senior year was when I was like “I need to step up my game. I need to actually have a focus.” Everything else were just assignments or messing around with friends. So, in my school there’s a nanofabrication lab, where they make circuits and other things. It’s a clean room. I again, cold called the lab director, and I was like “Hey, here are some of my photos, your lab looks pretty awesome, can you please let me take photos inside?”
I don’t think I’m a shy person but I was still shy about it because I had to put my work on the line. I think it’s one thing to meet new people but this was definitely very nerve wracking. That was one of my first legit photoshoots, where I was really thinking about it. I looked up so many photos of clean room labs, laboratories and just fashion photos. I didn’t want it to look like a generic science book photo.I was trying to mix the postures from the fashion into the lab. I wanted to make them so they wouldn’t look like normal photos.I also asked them and they gave me a terabyte of pictures they do research on, which are the backdrops of the pictures. I asked one of my close friends to be my model and because we had to cover our faces I wanted to get someone who’s eyes freak me out.
I’m not a good painter, I can’t paint or draw at all. I really enjoy looking at photos and sometimes I’ll get on the computer and play around with them. Keep editing them over, cutting things, putting them on different places. It’s passing time, but it’s also trying to make something else that in my eyes looks good and feels good. Sometimes I’ll just get an idea in my head and I’ll spend like an hour or two playing until I get it. Then it feels like I made something else that wasn’t the photo.
I think, not just for me but I think anyone also, it was just a matter of confidence. I hope I’m not first one to admit it but I think I’m always thinking of weird things or weird and cool ideas would come to my head. I would think about them but I was never actually confident in pursuing them. I wasn’t going to share it, I wasn’t going to do anything with it. Now, I have no excuse. If I want to do it, I should do it. So, if I have an idea, I’ll try my best to actually follow through.
I have taken it easy with taking photos because this summer I took a lot of photos. I walk around a lot, just because I like to walk with friends and anytime I see a cool spot, I’ll spot it on google maps. So, I have a bunch of spots ready. I’ve been reaching out to models, designers, and magazines. My goal is to get paid once to take photos but in reality, I would do it for free. I just like it that much. It’ just fun for me to take photos.
What motivates me to keep going is that I’m young. Also, I’ve looked at the history or I’ve read about how photographers come up or what it took for them to get to where they got. Some of them is luck, some of them just had the right connections, some of them was the one photo that they took and some of them weren’t even famous until they died. I think they just really loved what they did and people liked it. That’s what keeps me going. That I’m young and that I can reach out to people and if they tell me no I’m okay with it. If they tell me yes, I get to meet and take really awesome photos. The fact that I can, is what keeps me going.
Minor White, a photographer, said “every photo you take is a self-portrait.” I find it that when I take photos or when I edit them, there’s something of me in there, even if I’m not in the photo. For example, I’ve noticed that I have pictures of bikes and scooters, a lot of them, but I don’t know why. That’s something in me. I hope that when people see my photos or like them, that it makes them feel something from their past but that they also see something in me. Like the things I like or what I’m thinking of.
I don’t want to be in a history book, I’m not after fame. It feels good when someone likes your photos, it feels good when I like my own photos. I have photos of my dad when he was young. There’s a photo of him taking a selfie with a camera and that photo is priceless to me.I just hope that somebody finds my photos priceless. I want somebody else to care about my photos than just me. Because I put in work into it, or I try to put in work into it and I enjoy it a lot.
