Renee Peck Biography

I was born in San Luis Obispo, CA on October 24, 1983. I grew up in the small communities of the central coast, and moved up to Santa Cruz to attend the University of California Santa Cruz when I was 17, in September 2001. I graduated from UCSC this past June (2005) with a bachelors of arts in Art with an emphasis in photography. I just moved up to the big city of San Francisco and am looking to start my life and work in photography.

My primary interests are in travel photography at the moment. In summer 2004 I had the privilege to travel to Thailand with a photography class offered through my school. I absolutely loved the experience of photographing a foreign place, trying to find my comfort zone in an area that was completely unfamiliar at first, and figuring out what defined this new territory. It was a challenge to take an environment where everything seemed new, exciting, and beautiful, and find the focus points that would make successful images. It took a while to find my footing, but it was extremely rewarding when I did.

For me, much of the excitement and interest of a given place lies in the details. This is evident in my work from Thailand, which is soon to be added to this site. I’m drawn to vibrant colors, textures, patterns, lighting, and different angles. I love to arrange my photos into diptychs, triptychs, and groupings, to see how they can gain meaning from one another, playing with symbolism and metaphor and creating story lines with pictures. I continued my interests in this vain while working as an ESL teacher in China this past summer, and am trying to push my ideas even further.

All of my China photos are shot with a Canon Digital Rebel with a 17-85 mm IS lens. The New Zealand photos are shot with a standard Canon Rebel and a 28-90 mm lens. I am currently enjoying working with my digital camera and have made that my primary for now. However, I still love working with film and printing in the color darkroom.