Just before I left Colombia I was contacted by David Vélez about doing a short interview for the company he worked for, called Telemedellin. I didn’t know anything about Telemedellin until I asked a few local friends on it and I found out it’s actually quite popular. They’re an upbeat news agency based out of Medellin, Colombia and they feature a lot of human stories regularly. David wanted to do a short video on me about the street photography I have been doing in Medellin. Am I going to be on TV in Colombia finally that’s not an episode of “Locked Up Abroad: Dumbass Gringos Get Caught”? I’m still working on the later!
I never actually met David while in Colombia. Through a friend, who had a friend, who told me about a video he did, that I liked and wanted to know more on… I added him on Facebook hoping he’d accept (yes it’s ok to stalk when it comes to photography) as I had some questions on how he made the video. To see the video I’m talking about, click here but I must warn you it’s full of dancing Colombian women lip-syncing to the tune of “Shocking Blue” by Venus. HOT comes to mind when I think of it! Side Note: the girl with the headphones on in the video is a friend of mine who told me about David.
So from 7-Degrees-of-Separation, David and I were introduced and that is how all this came about. He simply asked if a TV crew could follow me around for a day and film me doing street photography in Medellin. Easy enough I thought and quickly said yes. He later told me though that he wouldn’t be there to film me but was sending a girl to do the interview. My heart kind of sank a little because I was really keen on meeting up with him to talk about the work he does but David quickly reassured me that the girl, Camila, is cool and top-notch. He neglected to tell me how stunning she was to, which was a nice surprise (hey I won’t lie)!
So I met up with Camila and the two camera guys at Santo Domingo metro stop where I did the first Help Portrait Project in Medellin last year. I had another local friend who came with me to help, Carlos Restrepo (check out his website here) that helped me with the light. We walked around for about 2hrs while I shot portraits and they filmed. At the end we did the interview along my favorite little street in Medellin. This is where I learned Camila’s real name, which is “One-Take-Camila!” She asked me a few questions, at the end of a few I said, “Maybe I should try that again” to which she would always say “No problem, we got it! Good job!” The only thing she let me do over was the end part in the video. I tried to do it all in Spanish but kept messing it up and after 8x she gave up and said “We got it! Good job!” with a slight smile.
Below is the video and some of the photos I took that day. (if your an email subscriber and can’t see the video, click here to watch it)
A BIG thank you to Carlos for helping me, David for setting everything up, Camila for only letting me take one take, the TV crew from Telemedellin (those guys were way cool)… and the Paisa people! Miss you Colombia!!!
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