Fine art photographer Stephen Podrasky is a visual storyteller who primarily uses a street photography approach to capture the moments he conceives in his imagination. Born in 1967 in Aurora, Colorado, he discovered an aptitude for painting and sculpture in his early teens, and followed those interests to the Kansas City Art Institute, where he fell in love with photography while taking a book-making workshop. The creative visualization skills he developed in his early art explorations proved invaluable in envisioning how to capture images that tell a story.

 

After earning his BA in Fine Art Photography, he took his camera to the streets, first in Kansas City and later in Denver, focusing on his personal work in between photo sessions for advertising agencies, industry and fashion. Having spent his early career working on film, he brings to his digital work an intuitive understanding of light shaped by his practice of mentally visualizing the final print while looking through the optical viewfinder, rather than relying on the camera’s back screen. Even now, his view is that no image is complete until it has been printed.

 

Currently focusing solely on fine art photography, he uses these analog sensibilities to capture the interplay of light, texture and emotion he encounters while walking around the city. Among his recent bodies of work are Urban Alleys, colorful studies of the quirky and ever-evolving collage he discovers while exploring back streets, and Caged, a meditation on our relationship with the animals we display in zoos and aquariums. His work is held in numerous corporate and private collections, and has been published in several notable magazines and journals. He lives and works in Denver, where he exhibits with the photography collective Photo Pensato.