Hunting for a photo, watching over union interests, or just walking down the Monaco neighborhood, Ricardo López Hevia is a real man. It is his philosophy of life, and no dedication or earned name has changed it: always daring, always consistent, but above all, always authentic.
"It has to be that way Charlon, the rest is for fun", that stout Granma newspaper photo-journalist answered when I asked what the Cuban sports media need. "Not only the sport, the Cuban press needs to be more authentic, because only authenticity guarantees respect and credibility, without losing perspective."
And Ricardito, or just Ricky, doesn’t lose his perspective. Son and nephew of cats, it was inevitable for him to hunt mice, but nobody gave him anything but hard work and advice. Ricky enjoy his achievements because they were won in endless rounds of laboratory and hard work, and he knows that glory is fleeting in a field as dynamic as his, forcing him to constantly reinvent himself to master new technologies and trends.
“If I had any professional achievement, I owe it to the time I spent at the old photo developing shop. That taught me how to compose, light, and incorporate communication concepts. Everyday it was a huge responsibility to develop 50 or 60 photos from established professionals, so I learned a lot,” he says.
So many images passed through his hands and his eyes on those mornings that his mental "hard drive" recorded a formidable photo file and purposes, very valuable when he came out of the darkroom and got behind the lens. He is not a purist of the genre, although it is clear for him that using new technologies gain in immediacy, he believes the key is the photographer, not the camera, but the latter does help.
"You can get good pictures with a good camera, but that’s not enough. For example, sports photojournalism requires specialization. To communicate require both knowledge of photographic technique and the characteristics of the event, the rules, the athlete and his projection, “Ricky noted.
Ricky does not discriminate themes, although he confesses that his passion is baseball: "I’m fascinated. I’m excited to get to the stadium and hear the trumpets and people screaming. I even dream with the future coverage the night before, I concentrate and look for the images I want to get. Sometimes theu show up; sometimes they don’t, but I’m always alert ".
This anticipation ability has allowed him to achieve photos which deserve prizes, but none compares to the privilege of having worked in several Olympic Games:
“The opportunity to cover the Olympics is always exclusive, as a professional and as a rabid sports fan. To see athletes who will always be emblematic figures, as Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps or LeBron James gives you a special sensitivity to combine both passions. For example, Bolt is impressive, not only for the sporting symbol he is, but because of his character, for maintaining that innocence to be out of a very simple world without losing his roots. I tell you, people like him show off and if he is captivating while competing, he is even more so in real life, because he is a man who has achieved so much for his own effort, by giving himself to what he loves, “noted Leyva.
Bolt is precisely one of the protagonists of an exhibition presented by Ricardito, together with his colleague and friend Marcelino Vazquez, at the headquarters of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), organization of which he is the Vice-President. In 15×15 formats, they both showed the hidden part of their work, which also suffer the space limitations of print media in Cuba, despite the easing of social networks.
It is inevitable to ask him about his late father, Ricardo Lopez and his uncle Raul. Two "heavyweights" of Cuban photojournalism, who became directly or indirectly teachers of several generations of newcomers to this thankless but captivating profession:
"This road was not accidental, since I was a child I saw all their work, sitting for hours in the laboratory led me to this path that I did not try to avoid because it’s what I always dreamed. They handed me all their experience, they never kept anything, on the contrary. They bequeathed me the greatest wealth of all, to give myself a hundred percent to what I like, to fulfil myself with my work. “
In brief, to be a genuine guy …
