© Ira Black Photography
I am currently a grant recipient for the 2023 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship.
I am a teacher, photographer, adventurer, author and world citizen. I am a student of observation, I am a story teller. I use my photography as a means for personal self-expression. The images I make are my words that tell the story of the people, their challenges, their love and their hopes that I see through my lens.
I seek out stories that are not at first obvious, but develop into beautiful character studies of people surviving in their own world. My landscapes help show others the beauty found in my travels.
As a Travel and Street Photographer, I’ve led groups to exotic locations around the globe. I have been taking small groups of amateur to professional photographers on my journeys for the past 20 years.
My travels have included photo shoots in Kashmir, India, Morocco, Turkey, Greece, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, China, Burma, Cuba, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Namibia, South Africa plus most of the European countries.
I have a bachelor’s degree in art and psychology, and a master’s degree in visual art and photography. More importantly then any degrees that one can have, are real life experiences in your field of studies. I’m pretty sure that’s been more important to me than those degrees.
I have spent the better half of my life in the classrooms as an educator in art, photography, photojournalism and digital design. I am a practitioner of composition, using only natural light in all my photographs.
I am sponsored by Canson digital papers as one of their ‘Ambassadors in Photography’ and I own and operate a photo travel workshop company based in the NYC metro area. - (CPE Workshops LLC)
My photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally as well as my work being collected in corporations, museums and private clients.