Random Thoughts

I started writing this article a few months ago, during the elections in Romania. I kept it on my iPad, finished it, and then I totally forgot about it.

In all honesty, before sending it to Mauricio and Hugo, I checked the website to see if I had already published it.

Yes, this period is that hectic.

Even though we’re in the middle of February and I wrote this piece in November-December, I chose to keep the original text and not add to it.

So, let’s begin!

It has been a while since I last wrote an article.

I published photo albums, entered photography competitions, arranged some of my older articles for books, wrote introductions for my project books, but I haven’t really touched article writing for quite some time.

This morning, however, things changed.

It was election day in Bucharest, the day we were choosing a new mayor, and I went to vote in my old neighbourhood, at my parents’ place, where I still have my residence.

And there, right there, sitting inside that voting station, watching people I grew up with — my old neighbors — I had my first real revelation. Nobody recognized me.

While I do visit from time to time, I can’t say I’ve been to my old neighborhood more than four or five times a year since I left. It’s not like I completely disappeared, but somehow I watched my neighbors walk past me without recognizing me. Even people I spent years with on the street just looked at me as if I were a man they had never seen before.

Yes, my appearance has changed. I now have a shaved head and a beard instead of hair, but I never expected people to simply walk past me. Twenty-five extra kilograms, glasses, a beard — it’s natural, I suppose, to look past someone, even though we spent years living in the same apartment building.

On my drive back home, I became nostalgic. I kept thinking about that small area where I grew up, those few streets, the modern buildings, the mall that replaced old factories, my old school, and so on. And while thinking about maybe starting a photo project focused on the streets where I grew up, it dawned on me why people stopped recognizing me.

Yes, I’m heavier now. Yes, I wear glasses. Yes, I have a beard. But that’s not why — or better said, those are not the only reasons people looked right past me.

The reason is photography.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment. Maybe you’ll ask yourself: photography? How is that possible?

And after giving you a few seconds to think about it, I’ll start explaining.

When I first started photography and bought my first cameras, I did it to document the places I was visiting, to keep memories, to have small and light cameras I could walk around with and take photos that were a bit better than what my phone could produce. As I progressed, things began to change. From the moment my first article was accepted by a magazine, from the moment my first photograph was accepted into a competition, my first winning image, from the moment I gave my first interview or publicly spoke about photography — things changed. They changed even more when I started making money from photography.

I function by an extremely simple principle. When I start something or truly want something, I put in the maximum amount of effort to become among the best. When I decided to do something with fitness, I lived it, breathed it, ate fitness. I took courses, trained seriously, achieved excellent physical shape and became a fitness instructor. That says a lot, considering my genetics and the fact that anyone who saw a photo of me before the age of 18 would have laughed at the idea that I could ever become a fitness instructor, back in a time when such transformations were rare, not common as they are today.

Photography was no different. From the first published article, the first accepted image, the first medal, I knew I wanted more. What does “more” mean? I wanted to become one of the best. While I am fully aware that I could never become the next Henri Cartier-Bresson or the next Saul Leiter, I firmly believe that you can become among the best, at least in your own country. But over the years, I realized something very important. To get there, you must make sacrifices, big sacrifices. Nobody becomes the best by taking ten photos a month or a year. It’s a process that consumes time, requires money, and demands sacrifice.

Not many people will understand or agree with what I’m about to say. Maybe 99% of people just want to take a few nice photos and post them on Instagram. They don’t even need to be good photos — they just need to collect likes, serve as small memories, and that’s it. Very few people want to leave something behind, to create something — an ecosystem, a story, a body of work — photographs that won’t be forgotten as quickly as they are uploaded to the internet.

To reach that level — where you have coherent projects, where people remember you for what you created, not because you gathered a million followers from camera reviews about which model is better in 2025 — you must make sacrifices. I mentioned earlier that people didn’t recognize me. Maybe that’s partly because I changed how I look, but maybe it’s also because I was absent for a very long time.

Romania’s National Arena, the largest stadium in the country, is located near my parents’ home. To photograph matches there, many evenings I passed by the building where I grew up without stopping. People were outside, talking, meeting each other, living their lives — while I was running. After ten or eleven hours of work, one hour or sometimes more on the road, I was running to pick up my accreditation, running to position myself in the stadium, running to set up my cameras and equipment, fighting for a good spot. Then, after two more hours of the match, another hour on the way home, editing, and then sleep.

To shoot a football match that starts, let’s say, at 8 p.m., I leave home at 5 p.m. Some professionals will laugh and say they leave even earlier. Three hours before the match, two hours for the match itself, and another two or three hours afterward for transport and editing — eight or nine hours for a single match. To reach your forties and be established, to be sought after, to be among those independent freelance photographers who receive accreditation for Champions League, Europa League, and other major competitions, you need serious effort. Effort measured in hours, days, weeks, and months spent in cars, in stadiums, and editing, until your name is recognized whenever you submit an accreditation request.

Many times I passed by my parents’ house while people were outside — the same people I grew up with — and I couldn’t stop. On many mornings, I wanted to stay in bed, but instead I got up, wandered, drove 100 or 200 kilometers to reach a certain spot and make photographs. Often after work, instead of staying with colleagues or friends, I ran to specific locations to see where the best sunset would be. On weekends filled with family gatherings, I was attending photography workshops or shooting matches of all kinds to build my press credentials.

Once I started earning money from photography, my schedule became even more chaotic. The boundary between personal life and work disappeared. If someone needed me at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday, I had to be there at 4 a.m. I’m no longer 20, with time to grow slowly. And the market isn’t huge. It’s a market where a few succeed — and most simply survive.

What I’m writing now might not resonate with many people, because online and on YouTube everything looks poetic. It seems like anyone can succeed, like becoming a photographer or creator is easy. The gap between that image and reality is enormous. Very few YouTubers are actual photographers. There are countless paths to every role, but to truly break through as a photographer, the sacrifices I mentioned weren’t mainly about gear investment — that was the smallest concern — but about time. The sheer amount of time devoted to this craft.

What many people fail to understand is that when you want to be the best, you must give something up. And in photography, most of the time, you give up your time. Photography is not a regular job. Photography is there when you are needed, but also all the time — when you’re building a portfolio, creating images, or working on projects that span years. That’s the biggest difference between what you see online and what real photographers do. I can honestly say I missed many events, many dinners, many coffees with friends, and a lot of time spent with people I cared deeply about.

So yes, maybe I’ve changed. Maybe I gained weight. Maybe I wear glasses. Maybe I’m now bald. But I think a big part of why people don’t recognize me anymore is because I wasn’t there. Ironically, I’ve met dozens of people and talked to hundreds — at work, in photography, in stadiums, with supporters, other photographers, coaches, players — yet I barely talk anymore with the people I grew up with, the people I once held close. Even with my family, I no longer have the time to see them as often as I used to.

I won’t turn this article into a comparison or a justification of whether it was worth it. That might be beside the point. What I want to underline is simply this: sometimes you need to sit down and truly understand what you want from life. After this experience, I’ve been thinking about it a lot — and I’m still thinking as I write this article. And maybe 2026, even though I had photography projects planned throughout the year, will be a year where I shoot less, write less, participate in fewer competitions — but spend more time with people.

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