Photography, tech, gadgets and a little of everything else…..this is who I am.

Throughout my entire life I have been surrounded by photographs. Family photos, vacation shots, candid baby pictures all taken with a number of different cameras by the two people who had gotten me into photography in the first place, my parents. If you walked into my parents home the first thing you would see is not their new coach, or their new tv, or the beautiful figurines but the hundreds upon hundreds of photos EVERYWHERE! I am one of the luckier people to essentially have my life catalgued from birth until now. Photography was in my blood.
About seven or eight years ago, probably about the time I started high school my interest not only in cameras and photography but in technology and computers had exploded into an obsession. I ripped apart and rebuilt my parents first $2,500 dollar computer around the age of 14 and I was pulling levers and messing around with what become my first camera about a year or two later. That camera happened to be a Pentax K1000. The K1000 was a beginners or what some would call a student camera that had very simple features and the ability to change lenses. I still have it, and love it! For about three or four years my interests in photography lasted but faded in light of my growing love for computers and other forms of technology. By this time around the late 90s the first digital cameras had already started to hit the market. Of course, they were not nearly as widely accepted and the quality was simply horrible in comparison to the film brothers we had all grown up using. But the digital camera revolution did come, most likely because of the growth in computers. I for one, jumped into the digital camera world head first. I understand many older photographers were hesistant but it was truly the two loves of my life coming into one and I couldn’t have been happier. Of course through high school I still used my film cameras mainly, using the dark room and learning things that the digital cameras were doing for people automatically. I thought it was important to get a base of knowledge in photography if I ever wanted to get really serious about it.
After high school my growth in photography grew exponentially. I was traveling much more and going to events and quite simply wanting to take pictures at all times. Every corner, every line and every object was framed and shot in my head and if I didn’t have a camera somewhere near me I felt like I was losing a once in a lifetime opportunity to shoot that image. I had now moved onto the larger digital cameras, not without the smaller versions in my pocket for quick use. The ease of use and growing ability to change settings allowed me to use a digital camera in ways exactly like a film camera. Especially in cases with cameras like the D-SLR; mine being a Canon 1Ds Mark II. My film cameras still made appearences, even my old pentax, but for the most part I had moved entirely to digital mainly because now I had started to post-edit work.
Aaaah, post-editing; one of my most favorite things to do:) Now I know, some of you die hard film photographers remember the days when “post-editing” meant dark room work in effects and this and that, but in my world the ways we can now post-edit in computers is far superior to what can be done in a dark room. Take out Large & Medium format from this scenario obviously as any large format digital camera cost upwards for $20,000 dollars and really isn’t worth taking a look at right now vs. their film counter-parts. So back to post-editing, programs like photoshop, fireworks, corel, painter and hundreds of others have made the life of a photography not start and end in the camera but just begin once the shot is taken. I can take one image and create several with it all with their own character and don’t let the use of a computer fool you….the art, creativity and pure skill of working on a photograph in one of these programs is true and just as important in some cases as the creativity and skill with the computer itself. We also now have programs like lightroom, Iview, Picasa, Live Gallery and Iphoto to catalgued edit and save our photographs to the computer, the web or send off for photo albums or cards. Mashing photography and the abilities of computers has been an incredible marriage and one I am very happy to have grown up with and been a part of.

I suppose that brings us up to today. I skimmed over a lot of my growth in photography only because most of my real growth was so current I think you should go look for it through my photographs….I think its a great way to see my growth.

So, I like to think of myself as what one would call an experimental photography, and of course geek at heart. I don’t mind using technology as part of my work, in fact I enjoy it, and I don’t focus on only one subject. I go from cityscapes to architecture to sunrises and portraits. I think of photography as a way to show people not the world through my eyes, but the world as I feel it should be seen in my mind and in my heart. A portal for you and me, to enjoy an experience together through a moment in time.

I thank you very much for coming to my site and looking through my work. I now enjoy updating my blog with all kinds of photography news and events as well as technology and other cool gizmos and gadgets; I may even throw in some randoms sometimes. I hope you come back to check out some of my work or to just discuss the topics I find interesting.

Have a great day, and above all….Be Happy.

-Eduardo Fenili