Oriol Tarridas is a freelance photographer, originally from Barcelona, who currently works in Miami, Florida. He went from being a press photographer as a student to being a full-time independent photographer of architecture and art exhibitions. Discover his journey and advice for people who want to work in the United States of America.

Oriol Tarridas is a freelance photographer in Miami, Florida, but he started out as a photography student in Barcelona who would work for Diari de Barcelona, a Catalan newspaper. After working for three years while studying photography, Oriol went to New York for two years to study photojournalism at the International Center of Photography. Afterwards he went back to Spain and worked in photo printing as a freelancer. ‘I was actually a freelancer during a couple of months, but once Unidad Editorial offered me a fixed contract, I took it.’ Being a freelancer in Spain isn’t easy, especially when starting out young without much savings. ‘When you’re an independent in Spain, you pay the government a monthly tax. To this day it’s maybe up to 200 euros a month. For someone just starting out, that can be a lot of money.’

‘The United States is made for people trying to start a business, you don’t have any major obligations and it’s super easy to set up your own business.’

Oriol worked for seven years for Unidad Editorial as a photographer and photo editor, leading a team of photographers. In the meantime, he got married and had children. They decided to move to Miami, where there aren’t many opportunities for fixed contracts as a photographer. ‘There are barely any newspapers here, only the Miami Herald maybe.’ The pay for photojournalists was too low so Oriol started looking at other options. ‘I started looking for companies that would hire me for anything. I started photographing architecture for real estate agents and I even did some wedding photography.’

‘The United States is made for people trying to start a business, you don’t have any major obligations and it’s super easy to set up your own business.’ But it also comes with great difficulties, like health insurance. Coming from Europe and going to a country where healthcare is really expensive, comes with its own challenges. ‘It’s still something that pisses me off about the United States. It has gotten better with Obamacare, but when we arrived in 2003, I couldn’t pay so much for healthcare, so we decided to not have any health insurance for 5 years.’ But with his children growing up, they decided that it was too much stress in case they ever have an emergency. ‘Now we pay around $1.000 a month for our family of four people to have health insurance, it’s a lot but it’s better than having to potentially pay hospital bills of $100.000.’

‘You can be a waitress in New York and in the next month you are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Your job doesn’t define you here.’

The most important lesson Oriol has learned from working in the United States is adaptation. ‘You really need to adapt, I went from being a press photographer to taking pictures of real estate. But when the Great Recession happened in 2008, I switched to photographing art exhibitions and now I combine both of them.’ In America it’s hard to reach your dreams, but there is no shame in doing something else for a while. ‘Things are not going to work out from the beginning, it’s okay to do something else while working on your dream. You can be a waitress in New York and in the next month you are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Your job doesn’t define you here.’

Text: Ona Van Dyck Colomer
Featured image: © Oriol Tarridas