Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Cuoco.
Richard, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
For so long, I have devoted so much of my time to studying music. I always thought that music would be my one true love… until I discovered photography. Although I am primarily a music teacher, photography has become an unbelievably important part of my life. Through high school and college, I worked for several different TV studios and video production companies. Although I enjoyed it very much, I wasn’t passionate about it like I was with music. Eventually, I became frustrated with how little I could actually accomplish on my own without a team of experienced, reliable people, so I turned toward photography. One day about two years ago, while working at the UMass Digital Media Lab, my manager asked me to go take some photos around campus. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice some of these images turned out!
Over the next few weeks, I went out several times to take photos and started to experiment more with editing. YouTube was my greatest resource for learning more about shooting techniques, camera settings, composition, lighting, editing, etc. I was very fortunate to find so many amazing YouTube channels with great photography tutorials, and they all told me I should be shooting raw files and processing them in Lightroom. The day I edited my first raw file in Lightroom was a day that changed my life! I was blown away at how much information is stored in these files and how easy it is to turn a decent-looking photo into a brilliant masterpiece. Since then, photography has become more than just a hobby for me. Even more than a passion, I’d say. It has made me more observant and sensitive to the worldly beauty all around me. It has inspired me to travel and to inspire others to travel. Photography has heightened my sense of awareness and my appreciation for all forms of art. It has changed my outlook on how I live and the way I perceive daily happenings. Photography has dramatically improved my life and I thank you for being a part of my journey.
Please tell us about your business.
I like to create beautiful photographic images. I am not a photojournalist. I am not concerned with representing objective reality. My goal is to create brilliant and dramatic images that inspire feelings of admiration for our planet. I like to think of it as digitally painting fictional scenes which are based on a photo as a starting point. Sometimes people say I’m “cheating” by editing my photos to make them look unrealistically beautiful; I say most photos actually look unrealistically ugly. The world is full of beauty and I had to have noticed that beauty for me to want to take the photo in the first place! I don’t edit my photos aimlessly until they look good. I notice the beauty of the scene I’m capturing at the moment and I usually have a vision for how I am going to make it look when the photo is finished. It doesn’t matter if the final product doesn’t reflect how the scene appears in real life. After all, there is something inherently distorted about a two-dimensional image trying to represent three-dimensional space. I don’t want people to look at my photos and see what they would see in real life; I want them to see it the way I did!
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
The role of artists has never changed. Our role is to make people think, feel, listen, and understand. What has changed though is the importance of that role. Right now, we need art more than ever. We live in a world where everybody loves to talk and nobody likes to listen. Art and music teach us how to be receptive to messages we may not initially understand. They teach us how to be better people.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.richardcuoco.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/richardcuoco
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/richardcuocophoto
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