Ricardo Serpa EUA

Over 25 years ago, I took my chances and went after a dream. Against everybody's advice, I left my daytime job traveling around the globe as an Export Manager for a giant multinational company in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to fully dedicate myself to professional photography. By a happy combination of (much) luck and (some) talent, I ended up being hired as a staff photojournalist for the Jornal do Brasil, one of the most traditional Brazilian daily newspapers, under the command of a truly Brazilian photography master, Rogério Reis. There I spent three of the most fascinating and exciting years a rookie photographer may wish for.

As a "sorcerer's apprentice", I was able to cover all kinds of assignments and learned to photograph under a wide variety of different situations. I simply couldn't have asked for a better training ground. From then to now, much has changed in photography and in the world itself. What has not changed is my passion: after all these years looking everywhere through my camera lenses, I have developed a profound respect for the photographic art, and I feel it is a privilege to be able to live doing what I love and what makes me happy.

Happiness is a subjective and individual concept, I know. To me, it means taking every image with the relieved feeling that a point is being made, that a purpose is being achieved. Happy or sad, beautiful or disturbing, my images always represent an act of faith in photography. If they can be more than that, let them represent an act of faith in what and whom I photograph.

As of lately, I've been dedicating my time to a lot of traveling, most of it on my motorcycle, visiting more remote and unique places, and meeting very interesting people along the way. With these solo travels, some of them covering tens of thousands of miles, I experience a different sense of freedom and inner peace, and the images I'm bringing back somehow start to show this mindset. It is a very good feeling, and it keeps me looking forward to new travels and new discoveries. After being able to combine these two passions of photographing and traveling, the natural next step is to add yet a third passion to the mix: teaching, and the upcoming workshops will make this journey an even more complete one.On to the next one.