B Smith's Second Sticks- Ruben Avendano

Having your camera stolen is indeed an unorthodox method to find your way into a budding second career as a photographer, but that's essentially what happened to Ruben Avendano, this week's guest on B Smith's Second Sticks. Ruben has been a cameraman in non-scripted for years; indeed we talk about meeting on the show Switched, an short-lived but memorable ABC Family show which depicted teenagers switching lives with one another. We also got into the specifics regarding the first season of Lego Masters, where Ruben captured the rarest of reality tv animals, the Double Bird. Like many people during the period of Covid, Ruben searched for alternate modes of expression, and found photography. It was at a protest in 2020 that he had his camera stolen from him, which first demoralized him, but ultimately helped him find the motivation to pursue the art of photography even more passionately than he originally intended. Since then, he has created an amazing display of images that has lead to him being featured in a number of exhibitions and winning prizes in various photo competitions. Additionally, Ruben and I got to revisit one of our favorite things we did together while on set, delving into political conversations. As you can imagine, there was a veritable shit-ton to unpack. We also talked about the upcoming fantasy football season (we are in the same league), and at the time of publishing this, B Smith had defeating Ruben's team in the season opener (sorry pal)! It was an amazing conversation, both wide-ranging and inspiring. If you haven't yet, please check out Ruben's work at the links in the show notes.

Show notes:

Ruben's website: https://www.rubenavendano.art

Ruben's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameraruben/

Additional Note: Friend of the pod Ryan Rude's film "Wilma, Wu and Lorraine" is a double nominee at the Simi Film Fest! Unfortunately the last screening may have been September 15, but if you are interested, go to https://www.simiff.com/ for ticket info and support independent film!

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