We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Arianna Leonarte a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Arianna, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I think the circumstances build your personality in progress than you grow day by day when you dedicated your life in something that you like so bad. For that reason I change many times my style in the photography.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Well, I’m Arianna, originally from Maracaibo, Zulia State, Venezuela. I am 27 years old, of which the last 7 based in Jacksonville, Florida, a great city for those who know how to take advantage of it and get to know it for the first time. Photography came into my life indirectly many years ago through an opportunity aroused by a cousin who has been the one who (in case she doesn’t know) without a doubt allowed me to see her grow in her favorite environment: her literary writing. I got carried away by knowing what I liked and I discovered that the first person who put a camera in my hands was her, she let me look at it, use it and without her realizing it planted a seed of dreams that now I fulfill by myself. I love photography above all things but it was not the first thing that came into my life. I grew up swimming, I practiced daily, I was in national, interstate, regional and circuit competitions, until I was almost 17 years old and since I was 4, my only goal was to reach the Olympics but little by little that dream faded due to issues beyond my control. person, like the situation that my country lived for so many years and that came into my life directly to banish my own dreams. I migrated to this country leaving my career in audiovisual journalism for less than half, I assumed that I would never touch a university again because my priorities were already other, I postponed being what I wanted to be (depending on the moment) to be what I had to be be and move forward. Today I feel calmer, more stable, surrounded by things that I have achieved and built by my own means and in the best way I know how: by working hard. I have been a distribution associate in a warehouse for 5 years and in my free time I am a photographer to comfort my soul, I hope one day to dedicate myself fully to that but I really let my soul flow without pressing standards or limitations that come with age, culture and the generations.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Never stop exploring for fear that you will stop liking where you are now. 2. Do not stop studying the millions of possibilities that the world offers you to do just one thing. Try as many time as you need to feel the satisfaction of getting your achievements on your own merit.
3. Feel free to be, feel, ask, ask for help, ask for advice.
Starting is a great challenge when we believe that we need the best equipment to do something. What many do not say is that you can start with you have right now, experience is what will teach you what to do and what to invest in the time to take walking your way.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
Many things happen right now making me feel locked but i’m trying to fix that looking inspo and see works of other people.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/fotosdearte
- Other: You can visit my vscocam profile, that’s my principal portfolio: arianna-leonarte
Image Credits
All photos taken by ARIANNA LEONARTE.
