Donate to help replace my trusty companion

Hello everyone,

My name is Pedro Castro, a freelance photographer in the Southern California region. I recently had an unfortunate accident where my main camera lens broke in the middle of an important photoshoot last night and became unrepairable.

The backing and mount of the lens completely tore off while taking all of the important micro chip pieces and hardware attachments with it. Any attempt to recover the small pieces were in vain as they scattered all around the floor and were too small to be found. In order to meet my future clients' requests and continue my business, I need to replace it as soon as possible.

I make a living off of taking photos and creating wonderful memories for my clients full-time. Without photography I wouldn't be where I am today. It has helped shape my perspective on life and has given me the tools needed to help express myself when words have failed to do so in the past.

Photography helps sustain my daily living and expenses to live comfortably. Photography has helped me through many tough situations and has contributed in experiencing some of my most cherished events in my life. Even after the 2020 pandemic, I still tried my best to find any work that would help pay my bills despite all of my clients canceling their bookings with me to abide to the new health regulations. However, the depression and intense feeling of shame took over my mind and prevented me from ever lifting up my camera.

When things started to open up again a year after, a few of my past clients hired me again for more event and portrait photography. However, I still wasn't feeling my best, so I never sought out more work. After another year and a half of little to no work, I burned through what little money I saved up, got into a car crash, and practically alienated most of my friends and family. I've never been one who enjoyed seeking help from others, so I spent most of my time alone not knowing what to do. Then the next half year went by in a dark blur.

Luckily, after talking with a few of my closest friends who reached out to me, I started to go through therapy with their encouragement and began to take photo gigs more frequently.

I've finally returned to a point where I'm at least able to pay more than half of my bills and eagerly seek out more work. And when things started to look well, I ended up breaking my main lens that has been with me since my second year of taking photos 10 years ago. I was unbelievably distraught to suddenly say goodbye to my trusty friend that has helped me for the past decade when things started to pick up again, but just like life itself, sometimes we have to let go of the things we cherished the most in order to grow.

With your help, no matter how big or small, I would be able to replace my trusty companion and continue my photography business. The new camera lens is a staple and standard for mostly all modern professional photography. It's a versatile camera lens that helps produce high quality images with more accurate focusing and cleaner background bokeh. It has the ability to photograph both wide and zoom with amazing accuracy. It gives me, the photographer, more variety when photographing portraits and events so I wouldn't have to rummage through my camera bag to find the right focal length to match a specific situation. It's the Swiss army knife of camera lenses and I would recommend it to anyone else who's looking to take photography more seriously.

Thank you for reaching this far on my GoFundMe. I'm not used to asking for help from others, so this is all fairly new to me. I'm actually very nervous as I write this. I recommend not donating if you truly aren't able to. However, if you resonated with my story and would like to donate, please do so within your means. Any amount will go a long way. If you want to help, but aren't able to, sharing this fundraiser with your friends and family will also help me out tremendously.