Welcome to Eric Formato's New Blog!
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Follow along on my vibrant adventure and see life through my lens
I've wanted to share my adventures and new work in a visual way for quite some time now. As time has flown by, life seems to have been a blur ever since I created the first edits that unlocked my artistic inclination a mere 4 years ago. My journey on the way to be writing in this text box to tell you all about my life has been quite the adventure, I feel like i've had a decent amount of amazing experiences so far for being 25... and I can't wait to begin sharing my story of Art. Light. Discovery. Travel. People. Music. Design. Passion. Emotion. Determination.Food. and Philanthropy. with this blog!
Some have described me as enigmatic or hard to read or free spirited. For those of you that know me, which will undoubtedly be the first readers of this blog, my previous statement may ring true as you may not know as much as you think you do when you try to think about it. This is at no fault of yours, but simply due to my innate nature of being a dynamic and passionate person, which keeps me making new moves all the time and going after new ventures. It's even more so due to the fact that I'm not the kind of person to be posting and updating the world on my every step of life. This is exemplified by the fact that I haven't posted about my major life events or accomplishments on social media. For example, I never posted on Facebook that I graduated college (and according to Facebook, I'm still living in Buenos Aires where I studied junior year). Never blew up feeds about my transition coming home from Honduras after college, nor about my first job after college at Choose Chicago working as a Multilingual City Concierge. Never posted about the my following job working for The Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago doing Latin American Business Development. No real announcement about my switch into the Tech industry doing Business Development, Content Creation, Production etc. with a startup company called Georama (sometimes I gave cool live video tours of the city though). Never posted about some of the major milestones in my artistic and consulting career. Never posted about my goals. Never posted about any relationships I was in or when any family members died. Never posted about getting published in multiple magazines. Regardless, it's time to change that a little bit. I need to explain more of who I am so people can understand me as an artist, as a business person, a brand, and a philanthropist.
So what happened was recently after my last job in the Tech Industry, I decided that I needed to take my own path, despite society telling me over and over again to do otherwise. I've come to accept that I'll never be "normal" in almost any sense of the word. I'll give it to myself though, I tried it there for a second, you know, I tried to do the whole 9-5- and in some ways it worked for me it really did... It gave me structure, the ability to take in a ton of new information, learn new things, and grow professionally... But as a person with an innate dynamic, diverse, creative, and passionate personality, I simply at this time cannot conform to one society's mundane path, one circle of friends, or one way of life... No seriously I've been in 5 industries in 3 years.
I formally founded my own business and I'm giving myself a time limit, with goals in mind to lay the foundation of what is now legally known as Formatografia- my Fine Art, Photo Services, and Consulting Services company. By fall, we shall see how everything is going, but at that time I will consider taking my gargantuan portfolio of work and experience to some kind of marketing or international firm. But who knows, this is the start of a new adventure so I'm not quite sure where this road will end up... I never anticipated on having my own business, in fact, I had always wanted to stay away from what I perceived to be the heartless and cutthroat world of big business. But now, obviously with older age I understand that not all business is greedy and harmful to humanity (I was thinking of all big businesses as evil corporations when I was a rebellious teenager). What has come to be though, and what I have come to realize is that I don't have to let work define me. I can Define Work. It took several inspiration people in my life to make me realize that though. And as far as business, it doesn't have to be cutthroat and greedy, it can be enhancing and enlightening, inspiring and engaging. Defining not only my work, but also myself has come to be one of my greatest challenges, on and intellectual, physical, and spiritual level. It's something that takes time to pinpoint, to synthesize. I may not know these exact answers yet, but what I do know is that so far I've gone through several waves of artistic metamorphosis, 7 in fact. Each period marked by distinct advancements that propelled my creative potential and it's all leading to somewhere. Those 7 stages, that's a post that will come later!
My photography for the last couple of years has been based almost entirely on fine art, but NOW, it is about to be so much more than that. I am rolling out this blog, as well as new products, an online storefront, a portfolio page of my best work, and new sections of my website that will allow you to see the other new services that I offer. Some of those services will include event photography, behind the scenes photography, food photography, portrait photography, content creation + brand building and strategy, real estate and commercial photography. In the future, I plan to also launch a fragrance line, clothing line, and event brand.
So what does it all mean? It means that Formatografia is growing to become a multifaceted brand that goes beyond just photography, and beyond just the visual senses. It also means from this moment on, you can get a behind the scenes peek of how I get to the point of taking some of those crazy pictures that I take, the editing process that allows me to manipulate and create, a look into what I find valuable resources or information, music and events, and more. Thanks for tuning in, and I will see you again very soon!
Here are some recent shots for your eyes to feast on, I hope you enjoy!