Juan Carlos Silva - Waiting for the perfect shot

Griffin Sendek| Fotos Magazine | 09/11/2021

Fourteen years with the craft has taught the Venezuelan-born, Pittsburgh-based photographer Juan Carlos Silva many things. Above all, he’s learned the value of patience and humility when it comes to the art of photography.

Juan’s story is a lesson in how it is never too late to start, and there is always room to learn more. Juan didn’t pick up a camera until his early twenties and didn’t call himself a professional until he was 28 years old.

Photography wasn’t the dream all along. He originally studied graphic design at Centro Instituto de Diseño Gráfico (CIDIG) in his home country of Venezuela.

“I started in the graphic design school … at the end of the career, I was like, ‘This is not for me,’” Juan says. “So I finished out my career, I got my degree and I never worked as a graphic designer.”

He would soon find that missing passion in photography.

“I met my mentor. [Enio Cuello]. He criticized pictures that I took on Facebook. He was like, ‘Oh my God, that picture is so bad.”

Juan didn’t take kindly to the critiques, haplessly spewing back his own vitriol into the chatbox. “At that time, I was so arrogant, and my ego was so over the top that I would literally fight over Facebook with him,” Juan says.

Despite the severe criticism and Juan’s combative nature, Enio still saw the true value and potential in Juan’s work; after the laborious back and forth in Facebook messenger, he presented Juan with a choice.

“At the end, he told me, why don’t you go to the art school and we can talk,” Juan explains.

Early in his career, still blinded by arrogance and thinking he knew it all, Juan didn't yet grasp what he could possibly learn from studying photography.

“He told me, ‘well I have 350 some plus people waiting to have class with me … I’m going to give you the chance to start tomorrow with me,” Juan recalls Enio saying. “Only because you like it.”

Though still not entirely convinced, Juan decided to take the man up on his offer and enrolled at Escuela de Arte Martin Tovar y Tovar — a choice that would fundamentally change everything, setting him on the path to eventually become the renowned, internationally published photographer he is today.

One of the most critical keys to Juan’s success is getting his head ripped from the clouds and thrown back down to earth, forced to start again from square one.

“So I started all the process of starting photography from the beginning,” Juan explains. “He took me to the ground and let me know that I was just a random photographer. I think that’s what shocked me.”

This moment taught Juan this wall of egoism was not an environment conducive to growth as a photographer; in fact, it’s exactly what held him back.

“I thought that I was good. I thought that I knew everything and that was the biggest mistake that I made. And when I realized that after a long time ago, I changed, my personality changed, my work changed, my style changed, everything changed.”

In 2013, Juan made the move from Venezuela to Pittsburgh, taking everything he learned and continuing to refine his creative process and artistic style.

Throughout the years Juan learned that haphazardly improvising his photoshoots the day of would often produce work he wasn’t entirely happy with. Shifting his focus, taking the time to craft everything in his mind before reaching for the camera made a world of difference for Juan.

“Most of my photoshoots come from dreams … I have kind of like this sketch, an idea in my head; I start to visualize the end product before I take the picture,” Juan says.

On the shoot day, Juan painstakingly plans everything out in order to bring his dreams to life. The outfit, the makeup, the lighting, the posing — it all needs to be near perfection in order to fulfill his vision.

Where other photographers might spray and pray, firing off shots as if they were an automatic machine gun, Juan takes his time waiting for the perfect shot — if it isn’t what he wants, he won't press the shutter.

“I don’t waste frames in my camera,” Juan says. “I will spend three hours in the preprocess and 10 minutes shooting, because I, like I said, want everything before I shoot. I’m not the kind of photographer that’s going to take 250 images.”

This unique process of restraint is cause for some initial awkwardness for models used to the more rapid-fire style of other photographers.

“I focus and I wait, I literally, models and people that are behind me, they’re waiting for me to click the camera,” Juan says. “‘Juan, are you going to take the pictures?’ I’m like yeah, I’m just waiting for the exact pose that I want.”

Before he even takes the photo, Juan has formulated precisely what he will do in post-processing. This way, he never wastes time attempting to fix a photograph in the edit, nor does he spend precious seconds messing around with the software discovering how he wants it to look.

For portrait and fashion photographers where image counts in the hundreds is typical shoot-day behavior, hearing of Juan’s sub-100 frame process might sound like madness. However, the slow and methodical photoshoot operation fits exactly with Juan’s philosophy behind not wasting frames and his creative process.

“That’s something I learned a long time ago: You don’t need a hundred images to pick one. You need to have one to pick one,” Juan explains, “and I think that’s something that a lot of photographers don’t have; they don’t wait. They just shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot. I wait. I wait for that moment, and I take the picture.”

Far removed from his days of thinking he was the best, Juan can comfortably look back at his work from several years ago and recognize flaws that he worked to improve upon. He cherishes each and every one of his successes but still understands that there will always be room for improvement.

“Now I feel that my work needs a little more of me. Maybe a little bit more of knowledge, a little bit more of feelings, a little bit more of technique, a little bit more of everything,” Juan says. “And I feel comfortable with my work, but I know I can do better.”

14 years with a camera and there is still more to learn, more to refine, more ways to improve. That is no way a sign of failure, rather a marker of success — the sign of an artist that has proven to be in touch with himself and his abilities. A photographer that has learned the value of patience and putting in the work and knowledge that this art form and industry doesn’t exist within a bubble of instant gratification — like the film days of old, it all takes time to develop.

Juan’s dream is for one day his photos to reach a status of immediate recognition that his style and artist’s mark become so unique and unequivocally his own.

“I want when you see the pictures, you’re gonna say, ‘Juan did it,’” he says.

Even if that’s the one dream Juan Carlos Silva cannot make a reality, it won’t ever make him put the camera down.

“I take pictures for myself. I take pictures because I want to take pictures.”