September 12, 2016

Meet El Sereno Photographer: Russell Marquez

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Russell Marquez.

Russell, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in El Sereno, CA (North East Los Angeles) which borders downtown LA, so from an early age, I was engulfed by beautiful cityscapes, sunsets, and graffiti. I picked up skateboarding when I was about 12 years old – thanks to my older brother. We would skate around our neighborhood on the daily and would watch skate videos in our spare time. I remember I used to pause the video at the exact moment the photographer’s camera would flash during the skate trick which helped me pick up timing, which is everything when shooting skateboarding. I started to become more obsessed with skate photography and one day I randomly found an old film camera in my closet. I started shooting my friends skating and the rest is history. It quickly became more than just a hobby to me and led to my passion for photography.

From then, I’ve expanded way beyond skateboarding and have taken my passion for photography to the next level. I have since completed college courses that involve different forms of photography and editing such as studio, fashion, film, and photoshop. From that, I absorbed the fundamentals of photography and various techniques to shape my own style.

Has it been a smooth road?
Not always, it’s taken me awhile to build my confidence in photography. In the beginning, I would feel an intense amount of pressure when asked by friends or family to shoot an event – I would constantly question if my work met their expectations or if it was exactly what they envisioned. Over time, I’ve learned to let that go and not let it hinder the joy of shooting – which has in turn produced some of my best work.

Another challenge that I still deal with is trying to keep up and produce as much material as I can. I see photographers with a vast amount of equipment who are creating pretty dope images and feel sometimes that I can’t compete. But as I mentioned above, I’m slowly letting this go as well because I know I’m capable of creating fresh work and keeping up even if it’s with my 10-year-old discontinued Nikon.

Is there some part of you work that is particularly difficult?
I would say the hardest part is trying to find the time to work on personal photography projects that I feel showcase more of my creative side.

How do you define success?
I personally define success as the feeling I get when a complete stranger contacts me for my services and does so for no other reason than that they truly admire and enjoy my work. I don’t define success by money or “fame” so to speak. For me, it’s just having someone consider and trust me with capturing their most intimate and important life events – and choosing me considering nothing other than the body of my work. I consider LA Voyage Magazine reaching out to me for this interview a huge success. This inspires me to continue doing what I love, not only because I enjoy doing it but because others recognize the vision that I have and enjoy it as much as I do.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
My future plans include creating and producing various art projects with my current team at Control Flow Collective. Control Flow Collective is a team of various artists (e.g. graphic artist, writers, web designers, etc) that work together to take on any creative project from start to finish. I was fortunate enough to call these guys my friends long before this project – it just so happens they are all creative geniuses. I also plan on growing my wedding portfolio with my good friend Q and hope to create a joint business venture with him as a partner.

Lastly, one personal future plan of mine is to continue with a project I’ve been visualizing for quite some time which includes interviews and biographies on people in different career paths (whether it be a female boxer or even a police officer) and find out why they not only do what they do but why they LOVE what they do.

The goal of this project is to inspire people to act on their own dreams and not let the drawbacks or other’s perceptions keep you from your dream. Anything is possible if you work at it – that’s the message I hope to convey.

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