My Story- Ella Fine Art

Photography had brought the light into my life, both ways directly and indirectly. I felt in love with photography at the age of 12, when I discovered the power of Photoshop. I started to learn photoshop, by creating a magic world, with fictional characters, and some stories from the fairytales that I used to read in my childhood. Everything went perfect until the moment, when I realized that the pictures that I am finding on the internet are not good enough for my imaginary stories, that they don’t express the necessary emotions, or the colors are not matching with my story, or the model is looking too different then my imaginary characters. That was the moment when I said to myself, I must create my own pictures. And from that moment I started taking pictures of everyone, my brother, my friends, my cousins, my neighbors. In this way, Portrait Photography became my genre of choice. My brother’s phone served me as my first camera. You would be surprised what I managed to do with that 4 Megapixels camera.

One year later I got my first camera, it was a Canon 1000D with a kit lens. That was the moment when the real magic begun. I used to take this camera everywhere with me. I really loved to play with various lights, settings, sceneries. I was developing my skills by myself, learning photography from old books, internet and some of my friends that where working in this industry.

One of my favorite way of learning and experiencing photography daily, was and still is, self-portraits. That’s the reason why you will find a lot of self- portraits in my portfolio. By creating some self-portraits, I got the chance to put into practice the new knowledges that I just gained, I could easily learn and understand how I prefer to use the light, the shadows. I created my own guideline of posing, and developed my own, individual style as a photographer. I managed to do all these things taking the necessary amount of time and not having a client waiting for me.

Creating my first portfolio by the age of 18, I was invited to work as a junior photographer, for a wedding photography company. This job helped me develop some great skills, such as working with customers, respecting the deadlines and working under pressure. It also taught me always to be ready to take decisions, to find a way of solving unexpected problems or complicated situations. I also had the opportunity to learn from some of the best photographers who were my colleagues, and to develop more my skills as a photographer.

In the same period, I started my Bachelor Program in Engineering and Automatic Control, because my parents wanted a nice job for me, a job that could bring me good money and stability. I was one of the best students in my group, but the trajectory of my life changed forever as I became more and more immersed in photography.

In parallel to my studies, I also learned how to be a graphic designer, I developed some valuable skills in public relationships, in creating promo materials and branding, skills that helped me a lot in developing the image of my own business later in time.

In 2013 I was invited to work as a photographer for 2 online magazines and one news portal. During those 5 years, when I used to work for them, helped me develop new skills, such as: creating a photo having very little time or information about my subject, yet it still had to be a good one and it had to tell a story. In this period, I had the opportunity to work daily with public persons such as politicians, diplomats, singers, actors, artists, etc. In parallel to that I was working with my personal clients as well and step by step I was developing my own photography business.

Working for magazines was wonderful, until the moment I became, myself, a news subject and story. At the age of 24 I was diagnosed with Leukemia. It was a long and a hard fight but even in this fight, photography was one of my main sources of light. During those 9 months of treatment, I discovered the power of healing of therapy through photography. At this point you may be wondering what any of this has to do with taking fine art portraits. My answer is this: everything. In this period of time I understood who I am as a person, who I am as a photographer and finally, I understood what is the thing that I want to do in my life.

During my treatment I struggled a lot with the “New Version” of me. A version with a bold head, with some marks on my body from the hundreds of needles that entered it, marks that will never disappear and then I just knew that I am not going to be the same anymore. The new version of me had a fattier version of my body, two legs who were lacking of power and a soul full of insecurities, but I still had my hands. It was an enormous effort for me, to pick up the camera and take some self-portraits. But I did it and now I understand that this was and is my power.

Even then, photography was the instruments who helped me to discover and to see my true inner beauty. To understand the fact that my body, is my home and it’s perfect just in the way it is, that my physical appearance it doesn’t matter as long as I can breathe, my heart is beating, and I manage to find the power to fight. This thing became my reason to keep working as a photographer. Since I remember myself, taking portraits of people, I often heard the phrase: I didn't know that I was so beautiful. This was the moment when I connected the dots and understood that this is what I must do. To help people in discovering their true inner beauty with my view finder and developing their self-love.

After my recovery period I applied for the best photography school in my home country, were I learned everything about Fine Art Photography and happily graduated it.