Meet Almond Butterscotch | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Almond Butterscotch and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Almond, do you disagree with some advice that is more or less universally accepted?
“Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

The fact of the matter is that no matter what you do, in order to be successful, there’ll be aspects of it that you don’t love doing. For many working photographers I know, the majority of your time is spent marketing and advertising, not making photographs or processing them. The same can be said for many studio and installation artists I’ve gotten to know over the years.

Now this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t pursue your interests, but rather to say that you should temper your expectations of what the day-to-day will be like when you pursue that which excites you on a larger scale. You may not see immediate success and that’s alright, so long as you continue to press onwards, while taking moments to assess your progress and the road that lies ahead.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
As a photographer who will generally shoot anything and everything, I often say I’ll leave it to others to define my work as a whole. When I’m walking down a street, I want to praise the architects who built the environment and I want to capture the spirits of the people I’m walking alongside. When I’m visiting a neighborhood, city, or country I’ve not been to before, I want to find what makes it unique, capture the atmosphere of the residents, and record it all in my images. I want to be able to look at the photos months or years later and be able to smell the streets and hear the sounds. New countries become new universes to explore, with all their fauna and flora, some unique and some universal. The people I meet are all potential subjects with their own stories to unravel and learn about and from.

Since the medium of photography can simultaneously convey factual information and tell stories about the subjects, I always strive to learn about my subjects and photograph them in a way that highlights who or what they are. In this way, I can share their common existence with others in a way that both informs and intrigues.

It wasn’t always an easy trip, and the voyage contains many perils even still.

When I first became serious about my photography, the ways to get my eyes on the work were relatively straightforward. With the explosive growth of social media, however, self-promotion has become the dominant course of action. Artists (of all kinds) have to become experts in marketing, advertising, social media, web design, search engine optimization, and more. All the time we are now required to spend on those efforts is time that would have once been spent pursuing our disciplines and mastering our crafts.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
With a city as diverse and as vibrant as Houston, the biggest highlight of any trip would have to be the food. I’d suggest creating an itinerary of food and then try to fill the gaps in with the “other activities”. Start in Japan with a trip to MF Sushi and then head slightly west with a stop by China Garden. Then you could choose to head to Thailand with Songkran before exploring the spices of Indian and Pakistani cuisine at Aga’s. Finish off the Asian leg with a meal at the criminally-underrated Persian restaurant Avesta and then swing through the African continent with stops at Blue Nile for Ethiopian food, The Peri Peri Factory for South African dishes, and then either of Tiffaney and Rasak Odewale’s restaurants (Taste of Nigeria or Jollof Rice King) for Nigerian dishes. After you’ve covered the two largest continents, make your way to Etoile for French, The Red Lion for English pub fare, La Griglia for Italian, and King’s BierHaus for German/Austrian fare. There’s much more to explore on this continent, but by now my visitors are complaining about being fifteen pounds overweight, so we’ll move on to the Americas with trips to Sal y Pimienta Kitchen and any of Hugo Ortega’s five tremendous restaurants (Backstreet Cafe, Caracol, Xochi, Hugo’s and the more laid-back Urbe). Of course, no trip to Texas is complete without barbecue and the best requires a drive up to Spring, so hit up Corkscrew the morning of the outbound flight and get some brisket and cobbler to go!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Ruhee Maknojia, painter and installation artist, and the love of my life. Thank you for being the most supportive spouse I could ever have wished for.

Website: https://almondbutterscotch.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/almondbutterscotch

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/almondbutterscotch/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlmondBPhoto

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/almondbutterscotch

Other: https://www.flickr.com/photos/almondbutterscotch/

Image Credits
Almond Butterscotch, Thomas Hawk