Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalia Fontes.
Hi Natalia, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My name is Natalia, I’m a few years away from having gray hair, I’m Brazilian, I was born in a small town in the state of São Paulo, I grew up on a farm, with lots of pets and that’s why I love animals so much, I had an incredible childhood, but life wasn’t always nice to me. At 17 I had a health problem that forced me to spend three years of my life in a wheelchair. It was a tumor on my left leg, which forced me to have two surgeries where I had to remove part of the bone and rebuild it with the hip bone. Shortly before discovering the tumor, I started dating an angel that God placed in my life, the person who is now my husband. He facilitated that extremely difficult time and gave me all the support I needed at that time.
Even facing this challenge, I was brave and took advantage of the time to study; I took the opportunity to go to college, where I graduated in Marketing and later post-graduated in Business Negotiation; I always worked with corporate sales while living in Brazil; at the time I used to travel on business visiting several companies across the state. I used to work with corporate sales while living in Brazil, at the time I traveled on business visiting several companies across the state.
I loved what I did, but I decided to change the course of my life; I decided it was time to be a mother, and therefore my priority would be my little child. When I had my first of the three daughters we now have, I decided to stop working for a cooperative company and decided to start my own business. It would be something I’ve always loved and could combine with being a mother. At this moment, I started in photography (2013).
I have been married for almost 17 years and have three daughters aged 9, 4, and 1 year old. My husband works for a software company as a service manager. He has been working for this company since 2008, and in 2016, we received an offer to move from the Brazilian office to the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA. We accepted the offer and decided to leave everything behind and start a completely new life in the USA.
We enjoyed that city and made amazing friends during the time we lived there, people we still miss, but the cold winter and cloudy days made it very difficult for us to adapt. During our second winter living there, we decided to spend our vacation week in Florida, where we would stay a few days at Disney and the rest in Tampa. Disney time was good, but the days we were in Tampa made us immediately fall in love with the city; we had the best family vacation ever. Although we already had the opportunity to visit many different places in the world (Chile, Brazil, Scotland, France, Italy, Vatican, Netherlands, Ireland, England), these few days changed our lives, and just two months later, we were moving to Tampa (June 2018)
Since then, we have been living here in the Tampa area and now living in Odessa. I like my home country, but today the USA is where we choose to raise our children, and we love living here.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Childhood – I grew up in a place that was incredible, and I believe it was fundamental for me to become the person I am today, but we were poor, everything was very limited, my parents worked a lot to support the house with 4 children and the animals we had on the farm, who took care of the animals was my oldest brother who started doing it at the age of seven, our house was simple, one room for 4 children, we didn’t have things like today’s children have, so I grew up learning that I would need to do things for myself if wanted.
Parents’ divorce – When I was 10 years old, my parents divorced, and that was really hard for the whole family. I was the only sibling who went to live with my mother; we had to start our lives over again; we went to live in a very small house where there was no furniture, we also didn’t have a car, and we didn’t have money to use public transport, which made it difficult even more to visit my father. My oldest brother got mad and started doing bad things, my older sister moved in with her boyfriend, and my younger brother stayed with my dad.
Started working at 12yo – Since we basically had to start from scratch after the divorce, I had to start working to help my mother, I started working part-time at age 12 delivering flyers door to door with advertisements for stores. I also worked in a mall in my city as a sales promoter; at the age of 14, I started working in a clothing store as a salesperson. I was attending high school after working at evening. On weekends I worked as a waitress in a restaurant after finishing my job at the clothing store; often my studies suffered because I was so tired from work that it was not uncommon to fall asleep during classes.
Leg Tumor – At the age of 16, I started working as a cashier in a lottery store in my city, and soon after, I started to feel a lot of pain to walk, and then I discovered a tumor in my left leg. I had treatment in several places, I did many exams, and nothing solved it, so my life as a teenager became more difficult than I imagined, but as always in life, God puts angels to take care of us in the midst of this turbulence in my life. I met a boy who stayed by my side all the time (who is now my husband), I had some surgeries to remove the tumor, and I had to stay in a wheelchair for a while; at that time, for a teenager, mentally speaking it was very difficult.
Support during tumor time – My mother was by my side the whole time, and she was certainly essential in all the stages I had to overcome; she was my mental support even when I was falling apart inside. In the time I need to stay at home, I learned to keep so many things; I learned to crochet, knit, cross stitch, handicrafts, and to control my anxiety. In the midst of this mental madness, everyone was struggling to help me get through it and get stronger, so my mother-in-law started paying for my college; yes, my mother-in-law, she worked a lot and had a good salary; she was also very nice to me and wanted me to have a better life. My mom worked at city hall, but the salary wasn’t enough to pay for college for the kids, I was in a wheelchair and needed to get away from work, so my mother-in-law made it for me, and it was absolutely amazing for me not to go crazy in that wheelchair and my time was dedicated to studying and taking care of my mind, which wasn’t always very positive.
After tumor – As soon as I was able to get up on crutches, I started working in the neighboring city at a print shop that used recyclable materials to print. I took the bus and walked every day using crutches and orthopedic boots to get to work, that was hard, but anyone who has had to use a wheelchair knows that nothing in life is harder than sitting still. All the time. As soon as I finished college, I got a 50% scholarship to do a graduate degree. I got a new job; I started working at a large company that sold health plans to companies and individuals; I also worked close to hospitals, adding doctors to our network. That job was a mental freedom for me because I looked back, and before, it seemed impossible to be in the position I was in at that moment.
Being a mom – At the time, everything was fine, but during a routine examination, I found out that it would be very difficult for me to become a mother; perhaps it would not be possible. Being a mother was something I had never thought about, but when I received that news, it was very difficult to hear; I immediately realized that I had a dream and one day, I had to be a mother. After that, I moved to another city to get married, I started the treatment, and shortly afterward, I received the best news of my life, I was pregnant with my first daughter.
Started with photography – After having my first daughter, I decided to open my own business and start doing something I’ve always loved. It was time to start my own photography business. Like all beginnings, it wasn’t easy, especially in an age where technology is so advanced that anyone can buy a camera. I’m always studying and perfecting myself to improve my look, my editing, and my knowledge.
Photography is not always considered a profession for many people, and there are always those “friends” who are always asking to do it for free, after all, just press a button.
Those who say its price is expensive. But having a photography company is definitely not just pushing a button, it’s not having a good camera; the obstacles are so many that I could spend hours writing here for you.
Move to US – After working with photography for a while; my husband received an offer to move to his company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh; everything happened very quickly; we had three months after the offer to sort out all the documents, sell our house in Brazil, arrange our moving (our belongings and everything came by ship), documents for our dog, saying goodbye to friends and the most difficult thing was saying goodbye to the family.
Arriving in the US, we had nothing, our move was on a ship, and it would take a few months to arrive, so we rented a house, slept on the floor for months, bought some pots and pans. Our first lonely Christmas was desperate.
The cold and snow weren’t easy for us either; we didn’t have warm coats, we didn’t know the places, we didn’t know the good places to buy food, and I didn’t speak English; I couldn’t depend on my husband to go to the market because he was traveling for work practically every week at that time, so it was very difficult to adapt.
Second daughter – After adapting to the USA, it was time for our family to grow, after all our first daughter was already 4 years old, so I got pregnant, and I was very happy, but the baby did not evolve; there was no heartbeat, I did not accept it and wanted to continue with the pregnancy, but the doctors didn’t let it because it was risky and after a few weeks after all the bleeding came the miscarriage and that was the hardest pain my soul has ever felt, but God was so wonderful to me that soon after I got pregnant again with my second daughter. I was pregnant in the freezing cold, stuck indoors with a kid alone (husband traveling for work most of the time) depression was inevitable, so we moved to Tampa (place we fell in love with after a vacation trip). Arriving in Tampa, I was already 5 months pregnant; no doctor had a schedule for such an advanced pregnancy, and I only got a doctor in Lakeland; each appointment was a trip.
Two small children at home and not speaking English, I thought I could no longer work with photography, so I deleted everything in an anxiety attack, my portfolio, my courses, my website, everything that had to do with my company; I deleted it and decided that I would be just mom.
Pregnancy of third daughter – After a while, I returned to the photographers, excited, creating a new portfolio full of ideas and happy. And so, I decided to set up my studio, and soon after I found out that I was pregnant with my third daughter, I was trying to get pregnant, but before returning to photography, when I started to get carried away and redo everything I blacked out, I found out I was pregnant. A week after I found out I was pregnant, I started bleeding, I immediately went to the hospital, and then they told me to do absolute rest, again the photograph would have to wait and I was frustrated, running the risk of losing my daughter and I didn’t know if I would be mentally well if that happen. It was a risky pregnancy, my baby had only two vessels in the umbilical cord, and the doctors said she would have some syndrome; she could be born prematurely; everything was hopeless, but thank God she was born super healthy.
COVID and delivery – On the day of the third delivery, I arrived at the hospital to have the cesarean section; during the tests done before the section, I discovered that I had Covid; after that, the nightmare began. The delivery was as quick as a c-section could happen; my daughter was not delivered to me, I had no symptoms of Covid, but as I tested positive, the doctor did not drain my blood and closed my belly as soon as possible, and they sent me to a room at the back of the hospital, my husband couldn’t stay with me because as I tested positive for Covid our other two daughters would also be, and then she wasn’t kept at our friends’ house so they wouldn’t get infected.
I was alone in the room with my baby I wasn’t being properly medicated, I lost a lot of blood in that room, they wasn’t feeding me, and I was breastfeeding; after three days, they discharged me without examining me, without removing the needles that were in my arm, so I need to leave the guard to go away and ask the receptionist for help to ask someone to remove the needles and the bag with the blood that had been in me for three days, after all, I was discharged from the hospital.
As soon as I got home, I was very weak, but I started having trouble breathing we called the doctor, who told us to buy an oxygen meter, and if it was below 90, I had to go to the hospital; my oxygen was at 57, I didn’t know what was going on, I entered the hospital, and my oxygen was already at 45 the code blue was activated, and I was put in a wheelchair and on an oxygen, right after that the nurse warned me that I would not leave the hospital, so my husband who was in the car waiting me to get back home, he had a wife intubated in the hospital with an oxygen that was on 35, a newborn and two more children to take care of. So the days went by, and the oxygen was at 35; I was weak, but I heard the doctors say that I couldn’t take it, and then a nurse touched my shoulder and shook me, and I said: you need to fight, you’re leaving and leaving your three daughters, your husband needs you, your daughters need you. She told me to force it along with the machine, and I kept doing it; it hurt a lot because my organs were already stopping working, my skin was sore, and the days passed until I received a blood plasma, and as if by magic my breath started on the way back, there were days trying to breathe, my throat hurt, my head hurt, my body hurt, but I won, I did it, and I just wanted to go home. When I got home, I was so happy, I couldn’t have died; I needed to see my daughters grow up.
Recovery was quick, but I had some heart problems, controlled, and I still feel my sensitive organs.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Natalia Fontes Photography is a company with almost 10 years of life rated as 5 stars by clients on Google, started in 2013 in Brazil, moved to Pittsburgh in 2016, and finally to Tampa in 2018. I am a photographer with a well-prepared studio specialized in headshot/branding, dance, gymnastics, maternity, family, couples, women, pets, children, teens, wedding, birth delivery, smash the cake, external photos, and others. My sessions are not time-limited and rushed like most photographers; I try to take the best photos in the client’s time and make the client comfortable during the session; I’m also known for delivering photos faster than most other competitors.
At Natalia Fontes Photography, you will find a professional capable of doing your photoshoot with high quality, highlighting your best, and reaching your goals from your best angle and pose that highlights who you really are. We are located in the city of Odessa, Florida.
What were you like growing up?
I spent a good part of my childhood living on a farm in Brazil; I grew up loving animals, having a lot of contact with nature, always playing in the street with my 3 brothers (1 girl and 2 boys), we always played together. I took kung fu classes for many years, which I was very good at. At some point, I was Brazilian champion for my age.
I have always loved nature, hiking, horseback riding, and everything related to nature. I also always loved taking pictures, since my first cameras and cell phones, I always photographed everything; it was something I always loved.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nataliafontesphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nataliafontesphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nataliafontesphotography
Image Credits
Natalia Fontes Photography
