Efraín M. Padró is a full-time professional photographer specializing in nature and travel subjects. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Efraín speaks fluent Spanish and has led numerous photography expeditions to destinations including Spain, India, Morocco and Turkey.
Efraín’s work has appeared in Travel+Leisure.com, Geographic Expeditions catalogs, Frommer’s Budget Travel Magazine, and many other publications. He is also the author of The Photographer’s Guide to New Mexico and The Beginner's Guide to Magazine Photography: Professional Secrets for Fast Results, which ranked as a Kindle best-seller last year.
When not behind the camera or leading workshops, Efraín likes reading about history, art, and philosophy, and collecting antique maps (copies!). As a former bicycle racer, he still exercises every day and follows Le Tour every July.
Today: I travel to beautiful places to take pictures, teach or on assignment. I also teach locally. I am my own boss and enjoy my daily commute to the basement.
Love to: Get up early in the morning when nobody else is around.
Hate: Writers who use fancy-pants words when a simple one will do (For example, instead of “Know All Men by These Presents”, just say “Hey!”).
Favorite book: Selling the Invisible, by Harry Beckwith, was very helpful when I started my photography career.
Twilight, when the skies are cobalt blue, is one of my favorite times to photograph. Images taken at twilight acquire a richness of color not present during the day, and the surrounding darkness can often hide ugly elements like garbage cans or power lines. To add an extra twinkly element to my pictures I like […]
I am fascinated by the creative process. I want to understand it so that I can be creative myself and share my knowledge with others. In my quest to better understand creativity, I recently signed up for an online drawing class. I’m hoping to learn what other visual arts have in common with photography… and […]
As a travel photographer, I always try to portray my subjects in the best possible light. Travel photographs, after all, are used to sell an idea—a perfect moment in time. There is therefore little room for gray skies, unhappy faces, or trash strewn about. Although most travel photographs are taken in the summer, when most […]
As I showed in my article yesterday, implying the passage of time in a photograph by blurring it can make the image unique and help it tell a story. Yesterday’s photo was a group of cyclists streaking by on a street in Hanoi, Vietnam. For moving objects, like cars, motorbikes, or kids running a soccer […]
“Oops!” “Darn it!” “Missed another one.” These are some of the things I was saying to myself as I was trying to get a decent shot of fast-moving traffic in downtown Hanoi. I was fascinated by the variety of vehicles streaking past me, from conventional cars to motor scooters to bicycles, all engaged in a […]
Taking photos to accompany an article you’ve written may seem easy at first. If your article is about, say, the five best ethnic markets in Amsterdam, you go out and take pictures of the five markets. But here is where it gets tricky. Should you take wide-angle pictures of each market? Should you focus on […]
Whether you’re submitting a feature article for publication, a 200-word blurb, or something in between, your goal as a travel writer is the same: Get the editor to say “Yes.” There are many ways to accomplish this, including researching your subject thoroughly and editing your work carefully. But another great way to get your article […]
Stock photography is an excellent launch pad for your photo career. It allows you to build an image portfolio at your own pace, and you have the freedom to take pictures of whatever you enjoy photographing—such as people, landscapes, or architecture—without having to deal with editors or being on assignment. And because stock agencies take […]
Like many things in life, photography has a set of rules that, if followed, will yield better results than not following the rules. This sounds very strict. However, and fortunately for us, photography’s compositional rules are more like suggestions. What constitutes complying with the rules is subjective… and breaking them once in a while is […]
On Nov. 15, 2013, I turned 10 years old—not as a human being but as a travel photographer. During my first 10 years, I learned a few things about photography (most of them the hard way), so I jotted them down as I reflected on the previous decade. Some of the things I learned are […]
