“What you do for a living?” He countered.
Parent’s gatherings is something new to me and will never cease to amaze me, I think. Our preschool-aged kids imagine that we adults know everything. I see us as kids, a little older, only pretending to know.
He was a tall, of balanced proportions, dad wearing a grey neck jumper and beige chinos appropriate for a work meeting, if it’s a tech startup, as well as for a casual chat about the kids. We were standing in the shade next to a swimming pool that came with a palm tree and a house he and his wife bought last winter. I was staring at his fully red trainers, trying, with no success, to decode their brand.
“Well, right now I work on my app, I’m a software developer, but generally I do many things,” I said. “I used to work as a photographer, furniture maker, I like to create, you know.” He frowned and his eyes disengaged. Most adults, I met, expect to hear one job title in one industry.
“So you do everything and nothing,” he reacted as if he announced today is a warm and sunny day while thinking about two upcoming board meetings and a few people to fire.
I smiled.
“Papa, look,” she shouted. My four-year-old daughter was flying a purple aeroplane she never played with before.
Hi, my name is Piotr
But wait, how do pronouce it, you may ask…
For short you can call me Pio.
I have carried a camera since I was 17.
The first picture of me and a camera, however, was taken when I was 4 years old. I didn’t know how to use the camera back then, obviously; instead, I “disassembled” it…
Years passed, and I started taking pictures because I was curious about people’s characters, but I used to be shy, and hiding behind the viewfinder helped.
Now, more than 25 years later, I can say that photography opened doors to places, hearts, and a life full of surprise.
Somewhere in between I began to write, and now, even though I am a visual thinker, I prefer this medium over anything else.
I’m based in central Portugal, where I swim in wild places, run photography walks in Coimbra, write for a community newsletter, and share my journey towards sustainable lifestyle business via this newsletter.
If you know what you want to do and you do it, that’s the work of a craftsman. If you begin with a question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that’s the work of the artist. - Rick Rubin from the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being.