Elias Kamaratos

When I was 17 I discovered, forgotten in an old trunk a Pentax Spotmatic SLR camera that belonged to an uncle who was killed in a traffic accident at the age of 28. In the same trunk were hundreds of his slides from his trips around the world. I was fascinated by this pictorial record of a life that I had only heard about. I picked up the camera, loaded it with a roll of 35mm film and have been photographing ever since. Over the years during my teaching career as a high school science teacher, I experimented with different photographic techniques, genres, styles even black & white darkroom processing. Reading "The Element" by Sir Ken Robinson's motivated me to pursue a formal degree in photography in search of my “Element”. When photographing, my aim is to capture that decisive moment with my camera where the elements that make up an image (composition of subject, light, colour) evoke the interest, curiosity and most importantly, the emotions of the viewer. As a viewer I am always drawn and fascinated by clever images that make you take a second look before you realise what the photographer is trying to “say” and how he manages to express his thoughts through the visual medium. Though my photography I always strive to do the same by making images that “speak” on different levels and dimensions.