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#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Armando L. Sanchez is a 25-year-old freelance photographer who was born and raised in Austin, Tex., and is now based in Chicago. He studied photography at Western Kentucky University and received a B.A in interdisciplinary studie last year. He has had four â€" yes, count them, four â€" newspaper internships: at The Tennessean in Nashville, The Saginaw News in Michigan, The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., and most recently at The Chicago Tribune.
His phone conversation with James Estrin has been edited.
Tell me about the photograph that you chose. What’s going on
I had an assignment to photograph a Western Kentucky professor at a sailboat race. I was sitting on the edge of the sailboat, and it was raining really, really hard. I’d never really photographed in the rain on a sailboat on a river. And I was hanging over the edge of the sailboat and waiting for him to turn around, because he was facing the other way while they were heeling. And I just kept thinking, if he turns around, this will work, if he turns around, this will work.
Why was it a turning point for you What’s the importance of the image
Well, before I took this I had three newspaper internships. And I had really focused heavily on photojournalism. I love photojournalism, I have a passion for it, that’s what I want to do, but that’s the only photography I had ever looked at. That spring, I started to look at the history of photography and I started studying it as an art form.
This photo was the first time that I didn’t feel obligated to make a certain picture that an editor wanted. I just looked for the most beautiful image that was out there. I tried to make something for me.
You felt a freedom to make your own image
Before that I’d always thought of photography as a very literal thing, very documentary. You go to a scene and you honestly document what you see and how you see it. And you bring it back and it matches the assignment and it matches what the writer writes, and that’s what I saw as my place in the world.
How did this photograph change the way you photographed
I’ve always been kind of scared to photograph for myself because I thought that I would miss something â€" what the paper wanted me to photograph. And that was the first time I realized that I’ve been doing this the wrong way, because I hadn’t really been looking to make an interesting or beautiful photograph. I’d been looking to make the literal photograph.
When I took this photo, I realized that I can do both at the same time. I can wait and compose and think and let the moment come to me instead of chasing it constantly.
After that, I thought very hard before I photographed something. What is going to be the opportunity here, what can potentially be the moment It changed from running and chasing things to waiting and thinking about what the photograph is or what it could be.
László Moholy-Nagy, with permission of the estate of László Moholy-Nagy 7 a.m. (New Year’s Morning). Berlin, circa 1930.Inspiration: László Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian-born photographer and artist.
Why did you choose the László Moholy-Nagy image as your influence
When I saw that photo, it was like a bomb hit me. I’d never seen anything like that. I’ve always followed a lot of current photographers. I’d never looked at the history of photography. I’d never looked at Bauhaus or Dada â€" until the semester that I took a class, “Photography as a Historical Discourse.â€
We looked at Dada and Bauhaus. These were people that were trying to literally tell a story, and they were expressing what they saw.
This photo, I thought, was so eautiful because it was just so simple. It was just these lines and these people walking towards this bright light. It was on New Year’s Day and has a feeling of rebirth â€" of a new kind of optimism.
And did this image affect your photography
I put it in my room. It always reminds me to look beyond the literal.
Now, before I photograph something, I think very hard about how I feel about it. What do I think is relevant, what do I feel is worth conveying. I think very hard about the light and the background and the composition and what the people are doing with their hand movements â€" do they look away from each other or do they look at each other constantly
Follow @mando685, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Fac! ebook! .
