Hi, I’m Jordan
My story starts in the age of Kodak disposables and photo album lined bookshelves. It was my grandma that always had a disposable camera in her purse. I have a vivd memory of posing my little sister in a white dress and a veil, like a bride, on our bedroom carpet and snapping a photo. I couldn’t wait for the film to be developed. That photo lives somewhere in the albums at my parent’s house in Tampa, with so many other pictures that I took when I was just 9 years old. I’ve known since then. I’m one of those lucky ones. I took photography classes at summer camp in middle school and decided to become a photographer my freshman year of high school, thanks to a wonderful art teacher who told me I could.
I grew up in the dark room. Throughout high school, college and graduate art school, the dark room was filled with silent focus, the scent of developer, and the ritual of creating prints from film which became my sanctuary. Time in the dark fueled my creativity and gave me abundant understanding and appreciation for photography as a fine art. My first camera, besides the many brightly colored Sony digital cameras I had, was a vintage Canon A1 and is one of my very prized possessions. I learned from the ground up and that nostalgia is something that remains prevalent in my work.
I always took to portraiture—people, their faces, inspire me. Candid emotions, motion and movement, the simple act of existing as a human being, are all incredibly stunning. As I got older, I photographed everyone around me and captured everything everywhere, the innate need to document life always present. And then there was America’s Next Top Model and I found fashion. I idolized Nigel Barker and found inspiration in the pages of my vast collection of fashion magazines. These were the photos I wanted to take. This is what I wanted to do. Someday I’m going to photograph the cover of Vogue. So after college I took a bridal fashion photography internship in London and my career began.
After many years of wishing and dreaming and hoping and praying, I made my move to New York City in 2019. Since then I have continued shooting portraiture as well as began to dive into the cruel world of fashion photography. I have photographed backstage and on the runway during NYFW for designers including Markarian, House of Aama, Moschino and Oscar de la Renta. Additionally I have shot for a variety of small and well-known brands, products and campaigns, including Kendra Scott, PH5 and The Toast. I’ve experimented with street style photography, event photography and lifestyle imagery as well, forever remaining a student to my craft and growing in experience. I’m still working at truly breaking into the industry, it’s a tough game, but I still believe I’ll shoot that Vogue cover one day.
They tell us to pick a niche and to that I say—nobody puts baby in a corner. Most recently I have found a reignited passion for capturing all things romance. Love and all the emotions that come with it are some of the most powerful and beautiful things we get to experience in this life and capturing that for people brings fullness to my heart. The past four years in NYC since the pandemic have allowed me to find and share such magical love stories with couples from all over the world who want a little bit of the concrete jungle in their memories together forever. Adding proposals, engagements, elopements and intimate weddings to my portfolio has opened so many doors for me thus far and has become a true gift in my career. So I’ll shoot anything that inspires me, I’ll try new things and I’ll grow.
As an artist, my goals are to explore, to learn, to inspire and to create. Photography is the medium that feeds my soul and I have gratitude everyday that I still love it so much after all this time. I think of myself as an eternal student, running on double espressos, constantly keeping an eye out for all this world has to offer. My ability to share that world through images and provide people with a moment in time, frozen forever, to gaze adoringly upon for years to come is why I pick up my camera every day. I hope to photograph you soon.
xo Jordan Niccola Valdez
