Today we’d like to introduce you to Ariel Hernandez.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My photography journey began on December 10, 2013. I was 14 years old when I got my first camera, and from then on, I was hooked and started practicing every day during school and after school. I never put the camera down. I moved to Mexico City in 2016, there I began my concert photography journey photographing a band named Enciende. I also started studying culinary arts and soon realized it wasn’t what i really wanted to do, and decided to go to art school to study photography for six months to see if i had missed anything after three years of taking pictures. In August of 2018 I moved to Texas it was then that I started my YouTube channel in Spanish, but i wasn’t consistently posting, so it did not go far. In April 2019, I moved to Austin to help plant a church and this is where I decided that I was going to turn my hobby into my full time job. It was slow at the beginning, so I got a job as a baker in a great coffee shop named lucky lab in West Campus, during that time I began to have two or three shoots a month and starting to make a little bit of money with my photography until COVID 19 hit and I lost my job. Faced with that reality, I realized that I could do this full time. My parents taught me that it was important to learn to adapt to circumstances and overcome them, and well, here I am doing photography as a full time job making double than what I was making as a full time baker. My strategy was to start my YouTube channel once again, In English this time and go out and meet people. Also become a part of the Austin Photography community and collaborate with as many of them as I could so we could help each other promote our work. I have had the privilege of getting to know some very creative photographers and models and together we are making things happen here in Austin.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No, it has not my creativity has been tested and challenged but I adapt and improve and keep moving forward. Some of the struggles have been feeling stagnant and insecure of my work and style. Another struggle has been balancing paid shoots vs collaborations. But I learn and keep moving. I think of life like a tangled pair of earphones you just have to keep untwisting it and moving it around and they start to untangle and strengthening out.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a Portrait and Wedding Photographer, I am known for my awesome pictures, I guess. I am most proud of starting my photography business and my YouTube channel. But the thing I’m most proud of is being able to do what makes me happy.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I learned that sometimes bad things happen and you have to make the best of a bad situation.
Pricing:
- 6 hour Weddings are $1500
- The Fave 1hr session 400$ 30 edited images
- The best for the best 2hr session 600$ 60 edited images
Contact Info:
- Email: dreamphotography1999@gmail.com
- Website: https://www.ahmphotos.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ahm._.photography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/A.h.m.Photographyy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9dBkSj4e4JWlr9kczRiCzQ
- Other: https://sellfy.com/ahm-presets/
Image Credits
Alexis Popovich
Katelyn Covington
Kat kostov is the mirror pic the girl with the hat is Chloé Guadiana and the guys name is Quaylon Newton
