Our next age fotostock photographer in the 10 x 10 series is Iolanda Astor. Astor’s images explore a world of texture, contrast and gestures, finding the potent moment when shadows meet the light. In the stock photography industry, predictive and white lit images are the most commercially successful and the market doesn’t seem to pay enough attention to fine-tuned artistic sensibility, but at age fotostock we do appreciate a solid creative vision.
See more of Iolanda Astor´s work at age fotostock or at her personal website.
Q: Choose 3 words that describe you.
A: Sensitive, observant and obsessive.
Q: Why did you choose to be a photographer?
A: I guess because I like to watch things (almost pathologically), tell stories, and create feelings & emotions … and due to the direct influence of my father, a great amateur photographer, who bought me my first camera when I was three. I studied photography at the Institut Fotogràfic de Catalunya (Photography Institute of Catalunya) and I worked professionally in video, film and television.
Q: Any special artistic influences?
A: I’m sure there are many, but they come without trying. I don´t really mythicize. I like to watch everything around me; if you keep watching, you see such interesting, everyday things. Undoubtedly, I am most moved by light, but also by people and their gestures, strange situations, forms and abstractions of nature …
Q: What’s your favorite lens and why?
A: I don’t have a favorite, although usually I work between 35 and 135mm. If I had to choose a single lens, I would pick the 35mm for its versatility.
Q: Are you more technical or intuitive in your photography?
A: Definitely intuitive, although I believe it is important to master technique in order to forget about it. I prefer a photo that excites me, whether it’s technically perfect or not, over a technically perfect postcard. I have a problem: I do not like “pretty” pictures.
Q: What’s the Image that you are still hoping to make?
A: I don’t think I’ll ever make it. You could say that I am eternally unsatisfied, photographically speaking, of course.
Q: Why did you choose age fotostock to represent your photography?
A: Because I’ve known of age for many years and knew people who worked there and could speak for its professionalism.
Q: Do you promote yourself through social networks (facebook, twitter, blog,…)? Is it helpful?
A: The truth is that I don’t use them.
Q: What is the best or worst photographic advice that you have ever received?
A: Among the worst, to make my photography more commercial… a disaster. And among best was when Alfonso Gutierrez told me to be true to myself in my photos.
Q: If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be?
A: I’ve already done other things, but right now I don’t know … I’d have to think about it.
