{"id":4254,"date":"2009-06-17T08:19:09","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T14:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.openairlife.com\/blog\/?p=4254"},"modified":"2009-06-17T08:19:09","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T14:19:09","slug":"eli-vega","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openairlife.com\/blog\/eli-vega\/","title":{"rendered":"Eli Vega"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe best photography is found where technical know-how and creative aesthetics meet.\u201d Eli Vega<\/div>\n

Born: In a railroad boxcar, to poor migrant Mexican-American parents.\u000bPlace of birth: Kane, Wyoming (not even a ghost town now).
Native language: Spanish.
Grew up: In west Texas, near Lubbock.
Education: Failed first grade due to language barrier.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, this is me. It was a miracle that I stayed in school, much less finished school. My male role models were, for the most part, school drop-outs, alcoholics, or ruffians. The only art
I was exposed to was body art\u2014tattoos on human canvasses. I write about my life story and life philosophy in my book, I Always Wanted To Be Somebody (But, I Settled For Much More: Me).
I went from being captured by adversity to capturing beauty through my photo art.<\/p>\n

I realized I liked art when only in the second grade. But it wasn\u2019t until I enrolled in college that I gained the artistic know-how that was to become the foundation for my photography twenty years later. It was at Texas Tech University that I discovered the likes of Cezanne, Renoir, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Degas, Mir\u00f3, Dal\u00ed, and other master artists. It was during those metamorphic years
that I learned about color, design, balance, composition, and other factors that separate art from painting.<\/p>\n

I will never forget an art assignment where we were told explicitly, \u201cYour design must be contained within your frame.\u201d Well, being the free, radical and independent thinker that I am, I broke the rules\u2014my project extended outside my \u201cframe.\u201d Lucky for me, my instructor knew what it meant \u000bto be creative, and that sometimes artists have to break the rules. I got an \u2018A.\u2019\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until twenty years after my art days in college that I was exposed to and bought my first 35mm SLR. I didn\u2019t even know what an SLR (single-lens reflex) camera was! Besides learning about f\/stops, shutter speeds and exposure, I found that everything else about good photography
I had already learned years ago as an art student.<\/p>\n

I joined the Fort Worth, Texas camera club. It did not take me long to begin getting blue and red ribbons on my judged art. A year later, I was already selling my art as postcards. Less than three after joining the camera club, I won the much-coveted \u201cBest of Best\u201d award for \u2018B\u2019 (beginners) slides at the Dallas\/Fort Worth annual competition. I haven\u2019t turned back since. Photo art has
been, still is, and always will be, my life passion. A close cousin to this is my writing.<\/p>\n

Today, I spend\u00a0 a lot of my time shooting in and around Colorado, including hiking mountains \u000bover 14,000\u2019 to form my images. I teach photo art classes, make camera club presentations, \u000band anything else that has to do with creating art.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

No le qu\u00edtes a\u00f1os a la vida; dale vida a los a\u00f1os. (Don\u2019t take years from life; give life to the years)<\/p>\n

Some other achievements:<\/h1>\n