My Autobiography

Before introducing myself I want to take this opportunity to thank you for visiting my website. I would like also, to welcome you dear viewer, to send your feedback about this website, the services that I offer, and the visual art that I create. While hoping that on this website you can find all the information that you need and also get a detailed outlook of my photographic style, I invite you to contact me by all means available to clarify or enquire about any topic within my services or within my portfolio.

My name is Christian Zerafa and I was born on December 1980, in Malta. As a kid I was always eager to obtain knowledge of a general nature about subjects that were usually taken for granted by most people. When I grew older and my distant memories started to fade, I frequently wondered how faces and places I knew used to look like some years before, and felt regretful for forgetting them. It was then that I realised how precious a photograph can be, when it helps us to recall the details otherwise impossible to remember.

In my mid-teens, I was given my first camera by my parents, after expressing an interest to start taking photographs. This was not the first time I was interested in photography, as I always felt attracted by this art as a viewer. The fact that for several years my father was the librarian of the town (Zurrieq) where I was brought up must have helped me to get inspiration from the two artists I admire most, Galen Rowell and Ansel Adams. I remember myself, when I was about eleven years old, adoring images in books and reading biographies about these two photographers who photographed the world’s most remote wilderness locations, two photographers closely related with the Sierra Club who spent many years photographing in Yosemite National Park. Soon after owning this simple camera my adventure in photography started. First I used it to immortalise beautiful moments to keep as souvenirs, but after a short while I started to be creative, trying to master the art by manipulating the light, diffusing it or creating contrasts, trying to emphasise the characteristics of my composition in order to covey the message that I wanted, and to show the viewer what I saw with my eyes and interpreted in my mind. After shooting thousands of meters of film I started to feel satisfied. With this camera I captured stunning images for quite a few years, especially during the 17months I worked in the North Sea, Denmark and Holland.

It was in year 2003 when digital photography became common, and photography became more viable for newborn talents, that I decided to become a professional. Since my early days till year 2003, I had already acquired a lot of equipment, knowledge, and experience, and as there was quite a bit of demand and I was being asked frequently to give photography services by people who knew me personally and knew what I did, I decided to invest more time and money to transform a hobby into a profession I practice with passion. During that year I was also finishing studying arts specialising in photography and earned my diploma. From 2003 till now I have covered many assignments in different areas of photography, including sport, weddings and all sorts of portraiture, nature, commercial, advertisement, product, news and photojournalism, and my work has been published in several publications in Europe.

Since my eighteenth birthday I’ve travelled, worked and sometimes lived for extended periods in seven countries around four continents including London, Holland, Denmark and Malta in Europe, Tunisia in Africa, California in the United States of America and Australia. As a result of my travel, in my extended portfolio a viewer can admire a fusion of different cultures and styles inspired by the different environments that surrounded me throughout my life. In year 2007, I made Australia home and continued expanding my portfolio and my contacts till today.

Photography like all visual arts is a method an artist uses to express himself, to tell stories about places, objects and people, to document events, to create illusion like an author of a fiction story and makes a subject look more beautiful or worse than it really is. A photographer uses his talent to convey a message the way he intends; being more dramatic or exactly the same as the subject looks. Every image is a story or part of a story narrated by a photographer. He might be sad, happy, or he might be lying, but by using an image he will tell you what he wants you to hear about that subject. A photograph might arouse emotions in a person, but might not affect another. Photography cannot be judged by points and awards, it can only be discussed. Critics can only discuss a photographer’s potential and associate a photographer with a particular style. Viewers can only prefer the style of a photographer to another but photography cannot be classed by points. A photographer’s work is good work if there is storytelling and a vision of the final use of the photograph in the mind of the photographer when he is composing and enhancing a photograph. If I will ever know that the whole world dislikes my style (I’m glad that it never happened yet and to be honest it’s quite the opposite), I will continue shooting in the way I like, because that’s me and I can’t see my surroundings the same way another artist does, and I can’t tell a story the same way another person does, but I like the way I interpret my subjects through my talent.