I’m not famous. I’m not Dwayne Johnson. I’m not even remotely close to that level of public visibility. If you stopped 1,000 random people on the street and asked if they’ve ever heard of "photographer Nino Batista", you’d get 1,000 blank stares, or maybe one person thinks I’m some other Nino Batista entirely or something. That’s fine. That’s accurate. I’ve never claimed to be any kind of public celebrity – and I'm not.
But in my industry (specifically the portrait photography world) I’ve built a little name for myself online. A tiny bit of visibility. Just enough to where if someone Googles my name, they’ll find a rabbit hole of content: photos I’ve taken, interviews I’ve done, videos I’ve been in, articles I’ve written, workshops I’ve taught, collaborations I’ve posted about. If you dig, you’ll find all kinds of stuff. Some of it is outdated. Some of it is accurate. Some of it is misleading out of context, perhaps. All of it, technically, is public, and I have been online putting my work (and name) out there since 2009.
That level of exposure isn’t major — but it’s enough to occasionally complicate things.
I’m talking about situations where someone meets me, learns my name, and does what anyone in 2025 would do: they look me up. Perfectly normal. But from there, it can take off into weird territory. They might come across images of old collaborators and assume we’re still working together. They might find mentions of a past relationship and assume it’s current. They might read an article from 2015 and think I still shoot in the exact same style, or that I’m still partnered with a brand I stopped working with years ago. None of this is malicious, it’s just how the internet works. It keeps everything forever, whether you want it to or not.
What makes this extra tricky is that I don’t have the level of visibility where it all blends into static. Very likely, Dwayne Johnson doesn’t need to worry about a random blog misrepresenting his relationship status because his 'signal' online is so loud that all of the overall noise gets lost.
Me? I’m in that awkward middle space (though closer to anonymous). Just public enough to lose some privacy in industry circles, not public enough for that loss to feel irrelevant.
I’ve even had personal relationships where this dynamic came into play. A new romantic partner once went down the Google trail and came back with questions — not accusations, just questions. “Who’s this?” “Do you still work with them?” “Is this person your girlfriend?” Totally fair questions, by the way. But it’s a reminder that being slightly visible means your past never really disappears. It just becomes searchable.
And that’s the thing I’ve had to come to terms with. I have nothing to hide. I’ve never put anything out there that I’m ashamed of. But that doesn’t mean people won’t possibly misunderstand what they find. It doesn’t mean context isn’t lost. It doesn’t mean old connections don’t create confusion in the present.
So I live in this strange digital limbo, somewhere between “totally unknown” and “recognizable enough to Google.” A little too public to be entirely anonymous, not nearly public enough to be untouchable. (It also "helps" Google results that my name is reasonably rare, as opposed to John Smith or similar.)
It’s not a complaint. Just a byproduct of putting yourself out there, if even a little bit.
And if you’re reading this because you did Google me… welcome. You’re not the first. You won’t be the last. All I ask is this: give me a chance to show you who I am today, not just who the search results say I used to be.
PS: Please do not interpret this journal entry as any sort of thinly veiled humblebrag. I understand fully that I am not "famous", but I have also had my share of conversations that stemmed from misinterpreted Google searches. That's all.