In front of the computer at the pulperia of Canafistula.
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I’m currently been interviewed by week of life in order to be included in their remote places part of the website.
Here is the first part, I’m waiting for them to send me the other questions.
1) First of all, could you tell us something about yourself and your relationship to Costa Rica? Do you come from Costa Rica or did you move there? Your name suggests that you are not Spanish.
As you correctly guess I’m not a native Costa Rican… Neither from Latin America, I’m born in France. I firstly heard of Costa Rica a little more than 10 years ago, the brother of a friend was leaving on a little beach town in this country, After my cinematographic studies I wanted to travel and I headed there in 2000, I then traveled through Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, And stopped a few months in Guatemala, from there I rushed to chiapas in order to shoot the Marcha Zapatista (leaded by “el Sub” comandante Marcos). I had to get back urgently in France where I stayed a fews months before getting bored of Europe again… I flight back to Guatemala with my current wife and install a restaurant on the south pacific cost, close to El Salvador, after 3 years we bought a van and headed south without any goals… just traveling… After something like 6 months on the road (through the same country) we entered in Costa Rica… Fall in love of the Tamarindo bay and the local and expat community, We’re living there since…
2) Costa Rica is said to be the place with the happiest people in the world. What do you think about this? Do you agree with it?
Well, that’s a difficult thing to measure… But I will say that’s people looks happier of what I know of Europe and the States and as for me just saying that’s this is the country I choose to leave in, build my house and mainly to have my daughter born in (she ha now both nationalities…) is saying everything…
3) You state that you‘re a photographer. Is it difficult to earn a living as a photographer in such country?
I’m not sure it is easy in any country of the world to earn a living as a photographer… and I have no point to compare the difficulties, but what I can say for is that the recent crisis made the things more difficult, I was shooting a lot of architecture and Real Estate photography, that part of my revenue went very low in 2009… I had to re market my services and the property management took a big part of that loss, contracting me for house shooting. The wedding photography also suffered from that crisis because most of customers are from the US and Canada coming down to Costa Rica for a tropical wedding. The press (magazine and newspaper) had tough times too with loss of advertisement, I saw a few publication that totally disappeared last year…
Anyway this year looks better… So I can earn a living from my photography adding it videography, but as everywhere I guess it’s stressful and you never know if you’ll have a contract in the next months… But I won’t complain, it’s one of the best job in the world, honestly…
