Marco ILLESCAS Echenique

Well! Let's keep it short.
I'm a Peruvian born male; I did graduate in Computer Sciences but ended up working in IT consulting; and made my way into telecommunications and software development business.

To compensate my rather Vulcan "logic" job (and since I'm not a fan of team sports other than basketball, but I'm too lazy to practice it!) I starting to do trekking travels around my country, even more I did some mountain climbing stuff too.

As you must suspect, I wanted to get pictures of those travels and adventures. To be honest I lost a bunch of shots for not knowing anything about photography so I started to teach myself, and reading and consuming tons of film, at that time my work focused mainly on landscapes and group shots, but in the easy point and shoot way.

As time went by and my career evolved I started to travel abroad; lucky me, I ended up living in Brazil were I put my hands on several photography magazines (both English and Portuguese) that were not available in Peru, and finally I took formal courses on photography: basic technique, composition and studio lighting. Since then my bond with photography grew up a lot, and I have never stopped of taking shots, and adding gear.
Besides landscapes, I'm still learning on portraiture, macro, nudity and food; I've quited a little bit from landscaping due to tight schedules of work and because shooting at home is quite challenging in use of creativity (that's harder that going to a nice outdoor!), and is challenging in use of light, since I don't have studio strobes I use natural light which I can not fully control.

For me photography is about an exchange of emotions and feelings trough pictures with people, and the environment; my goal is always to find angles, colors, moments, people and their actions that result in unique eye and mind catching shots; of course I'm more biased to the beauty side of photography, I hope some day I would go into the journalism, and social expressions but I'm not feeling confident enough to portray strong social events in a decent way.

Portfolio

Portraits

Photo Journalism

Projects

Landscapes

Stock Photography

Artist's Statement

I do hiking and treking and also landscaping photography just because landscapes are out there and I can not take those with me back home, and because not everybody has the luck of seeing wonderful landscapes so I like to share my luck.

So to speak I do tend to shot sights that can make people wonder how would be if they were or even care a little more about natural wilderness; usually I just set my eye in a sight and start drawing a box around an imaginary shot, work on my mental composition and then I shot; it's some times a mere reflex too (specially when I'm in somebody's company!)

For my little showcase here I selected six different shots, one Sunrise from Puerto Rico (I was amazed by the colors and the drama of early mornings by the beach), one shot from Lake Villarica in the south of Chile (one of the bluest skies I've ever saw), one from Santiago, Chile's capital city, a gorgeous morning sky as seen from my apartment window; plus three shots from Chilean Patagonia: Pehoe lake (the most turquoise lake I've ever saw) and two from the magnificent Paine Towers park. I choose this particular selection because I believe that they're some of my best landscapes after several years of training and patience development of "sight" ability.

Utata Member Page for Marco ILLESCAS Echenique