Meet Javier Villalobos

We recently connected with Javier Villalobos and have shared our conversation below.

Javier, so great to have you with us and thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with the community. So, let’s jump into something that stops so many people from going after their dreams – haters, nay-sayers, etc. We’d love to hear about how you dealt with that and persisted on your path.

The best and most wise thing you can do for yourself is to simply focus on yourself and do the things that make you happy and love regardless of what people think about you. When it comes to people with opinions– they’re always going to be there. Speaking on photographs, it’s important to take photographs for yourself and not for others or social media likes. If your goal is for likes or engagement and not for the love of the game, a lot of the time what happens is slow burnout. Without true joy in what you’re doing– you won’t continue. That’s why it’s critical to try to change your perspective on people’s opinions about yourself and just enjoy finding that thing that will bring you joy.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I was born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1991 and was adopted and brought to Texas when I was a baby. I began taking photographs because of my mother’s love for photography. Genuinely, the reason why I take photographs is to remember the little things later on in my life, they’re for me and not for any other reason than that. I don’t particularly like the term street photographer because I think it’s more than that and it can be very hard to quantify. What I find so exciting about taking photographs is creating images like I see in my mind, capturing human moments that resonate with me. It’s almost like a feeling you get when you look at the photos afterwards, something you might not understand. I’m still continuing to work on a few projects– a few new and continuing my original street photography book. I’ve found recently that grouping photos into projects, personally, really helps me sort through the work. The original photobook that I was working on I decided to continue shooting for. Frankly, being more critical of the images because I would rather have less great photos than many average images.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

It’s important for a street photographer to have great observation and perception skills– to be aware, present and mindful. Being actively engaged in your surroundings, and noticing the small details or patterns and applying these trained observations to make faster decisive decisions. This is vital to capturing moments and actually being prepared to take a photograph of it. Another thing that I would focus on if I was early in my photography journey would be learning your gear. Find what you want to take photographs of, choose a camera (literally any camera), one lens and focal length and master it until you can operate it without thinking and without hesitation. Mastering your gear will give you confidence and help you with capturing the images you want. Lastly, gear doesn’t matter. You can take great photographs with any camera.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

I’ve dedicated myself to master zone focusing with a manual 35mm lens. Zone focusing is a popular technique for street and documentary photographers, allowing them to react quickly to street scenes and capture decisive moments. Essentially, zone focusing is about pre-planning your focus to be ready for action, rather than relying on the start up and hunting of the autofocus system. For example, if you set the lens to f8 and were to look at the focus scale on the lens body, it would show a focal range between 4 and 7 feet away from the front of the lens. This means that anyone or anything that comes within that 3 foot zone, from a minimum of 4 feet away and a maximum of 7 feet away, will be in focus. This usually, but not always involves shooting the camera from the hip or not even bringing your eye up to the viewfinder. This learning experience has been an extremely eyeopening, joyful and freeing. I’ve created some of my favorite images, and absolutely missing others but that’s the game. It’s been a lot of fun adding this to my skill set and truly harkens back to what I said earlier about mastering your gear and knowing it inside and out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/javipavi
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iavipavi/
• Twitter: https://x.com/javipavi

Image Credits

Javier Villalobos