I am a full time professional portrait and wedding photographer and college professor, and have been working as an artist and photographer in the Cleveland area my whole life. I have a BFA in photography from The Cleveland Institute of Art, where I also studied painting, printmaking, and video.
Although I come from a family of professional and amateur photographers, drawing and painting were my first interests. It wasn’t until I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art that I developed an interest in photography as it related to the video work I was doing at the time. Already having a familiarity with the darkroom process from spending time as a child in my brother’s darkroom, it was a relatively easy transition to creating images with the camera, and developing those images under the glow of the amber light in the lab. Although most of the work I do today is digital, the creative process, from composing images, making technical choices, to post processing, is essentially the same as with traditional photography. The film and print process is not completely gone, however, as I still maintain one of the last professional black and white darkrooms in the Cleveland area, where I process and print my own work, as well as the work of other professionals and hobbyists.
I am also owner and operator of Mastroianni Photography and Arts, a photographic studio and art gallery where I feature not only my own work, but the work of other area artists as well.
