Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Del Toro.
Hi Elizabeth, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hi my name is Elizabeth and I was born in Brooklyn, NY. My family and I when I was 1 moved to Haledon, NJ and that’s where I grew up. My mom and dad divorced when I was 4 so it was always just my mom, sister, and I. At a very young age I got my hands on my first camera. I still have it the first camera I ever used. It has a little tiger on it and it was a film camera. My love for photography grew over the years. When I finally graduated high school I got accepted to go to Philadelphia and pursue it at the Art Institute, but failed to go due to not being able to afford it. I was devastated to say the least. I went on to go to community college in Paterson, NJ. They couldn’t offer a lot of art classes so I felt stuck. I than transferred to Bergen Community College. There I learned so much more for my love of photography. Than on the weekends I took my dslr camera that my mom had just bought me and I would go to free concerts. I ended up at this mall that Mike Deleasa was playing at. I took as many photos as I could. I edited them when I got home and when I posted them online he reached out to me and told me how much he loved the photos. I was ecstatic! After that he was getting me passes to every show he had. Than a website caught wind of my work and than I started working for them as well. I was photographing bands like action item, Jake Miller, etc. I was living the dream and building my portfolio. I called myself Hold on Photography. After that I started getting the itch to learn something new. I wanted to get into making youtube videos. This was during the early days of youtube. I started teaching myself how to edit and film and I did it with makeup and get ready videos. I would reach out to random people on Twitter asking what can I improve on. The feedback was amazing and my videos were getting better. My subscribers were loving everything I was posting and the views and subscribers were coming in fast. At that time I was making videos I was so lonely and was in a very abusive relationship with my ex. I finally felt like I had control of something that I loved. Than I wasn’t happy or satisfied and decided to visit a friend in Florida and visited Disney World for the first time. I had never been and logged everything. When I got back home I was so depressed. I just felt stuck. I felt so alive when I went to florida. So my friend told me to apply to work at Disneyworld for the Disney College Program. So I did that. It took forever to get accepted but I got in! So I moved in 2016 and started working at Hollywood studios. I was making friends with so many people. I loved my job and everything was perfect. I knew this is where I wanted to restart my life. I was still making youtube videos. I extended my program twice and I was able to go part time. Once I went part time at Disneyworld. That’s when everything with company was going downhill, but I did get to be opening team of the land of Pandora at Animal Kingdom. It was fun for a little, but started to hate my job. I pursued other jobs at that time and still kept Disney part time. At one point I couldn’t afford to live in Florida anymore and had to pack up my stuff and move. I was devastated, but while waiting for the right time to leave my friend and his family let me stay with them. We decided I wasn’t going to leave and than I find a job at Mortem Manor Haunted house in Old Town. I was hired as the ticket girl. It was so much fun and I loved everyone I worked with. It was a nice change from working at the happiest place on earth to the scariest place on earth. While working one night this handsome man came to my window. Now at this time I stopped dating and deleted all the dating apps I was so done with men, but there was something about him. He came to my window 3 times that night. Ever since than we have been together and now we are getting married this year in October. We are so happy and in love. I still do youtube videos here and there and we did move to Wisconsin at one point, but still came back and moved to Florida. I cremate videos on tik tok and occasionally on YouTube. I would say my story is still going and changes ever so often, but I would not change a thing about it.
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?
Looking back the road my parents paved me was not smooth at all. With my dad divorcing my mom when I was 4 and leaving us with nothing. She was a stay at home mom. Than she went into a dark depression and became an alcoholic and even drank herself into a coma. Growing up I was always the ugly girl at school that no boy ever wanted to look at or even think about dating. My best friend is a model and everyone only wanted to be my friend so they could be her friend. Over the years she was even on shows like gossip girl and project runway. Than after high school I thought I was in love, but I was wrong and ended up being with my abusive ex and he would punch me, slap me, emotionally abuse me and make me spend all my money on him and he racked up all my cc’s. He made me pay his car payments, gas, concert tickets, meet and greets, etc. While out of the 8 years he never worked a day in his life. Things became better after I moved to Florida and gained some confidence and left him and started finding out who I wanted to be and become.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I have been really working on growing my tik tok account and youtube all over again. It’s not easy, but I feel like everyone’s story is so different and I want to tell my side. I had done youtube for many years, but stopped because I was not feeling as creative as I did in the past. It’s alot harder to grow on social media because that’s what everyone wants to do. I just want to make people smile and love my work because I put my heart and soul into it.
How do you think about happiness?
Happiness is where the heart is. Right now my happiness is with my fiance and I. We are about to get married in October and never thought I would ever be in love again. He has showed me how a happy loving relationship is and he brings me so much joy in my life. I wake up every morning with pure happiness together thinking about how we are building our future.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xbabyyboo?igsh=czBqdXUzOXNteWd3
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/17AWrVoyBo/
- Twitter: https://x.com/xBabyyBoo?s=09
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/xbabyyboo
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@xbabyyboo?_t=ZT-8xKm67qI9up&_r=1
Image Credits
All of those concert images were taken by me Hold On Photography.
