It all began with my wife, really.  

And if I’m honest, I can tell you that she is the reason I am even in Photography in the first place but I’ll get to that in a moment.

My journey in photography was formed out of a need to create and express myself in art.  I’ve always loved creating art and can say under oath that I’ve achieved straight A’s in art class all throughout my school years.  (I’m sure my mother still has some artifacts from the yesteryears).

However, because I thought I wasn’t any good at any particular discipline in the Arts, I gravitated to more of a structured (boring) application of it and became a Design Engineer.  This may sound exciting to some, and to some that are working at TESLA I’m sure that it can be but that wasn’t the case for me. I wasn’t designing the next electric self driving car trust me. It was more like designing where the next pipe was going to be placed while in my 5x5 ft cubicle. (It’s already giving me claustrophobia just thinking about it!)

Fast forward to the married version of me, my wife was looking to update her hair stylist portfolio and I, the owner of a brand new, semi professional DSLR camera told her, “Not to worry babe.  I can take these headshots for you! After all, how hard can it be?”  That was the beginning of my journey to play with light and after much trial and error, I decided to dedicate myself to this form of art.

The following 3 months, I started to learn the skill of shooting natural light. (I didn’t want to spend money on expensive studio lights just yet), using any excuse to take my camera out to shoot anything interesting and random. I had an early love for taking shots of cloud formations for whatever reason and soon after I began to love photography at every snap. 

Yes, I eventually was able to take those great headshots for my wife and thankfully she loved them! (Whew)

With my new found love, I waved so long to my Design Engineer career and decided to pursue photography full-time. Skipping forward years later, I was able to top those hair photos when I photographed my wife’s maternity photos documenting her journey into Motherhood.  There’s an unspoken energy of strength and beauty that surrounds an expecting mother that I enjoy capturing for my clients.  Walking by that photo every time I would come home made me cherish that moment more and more and finally I realized I found my passion and calling. I wanted to become a maternity photographer and the rest is history.  Or better yet, the rest is my website!

MOTHERLY PORTRAITS

Antonio specializes exclusively in fashion and fine-art inspired maternity portraits. For more of MOTHERLY PORTRAITS please visit our maternity gallery. For bookings and information on maternity photography please reach out to us by filling out the contact form here.

2021