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In the blood - part 1 of 1 2

by Sam Sciarrino Published 01/11/2012

Canadian Sam Scarrino is a second-generation photographer and has been a professional for over 25 years, and his highly rated training sessions draw on his vast wealth of knowledge and experience.

For over a quarter of a century now photographer Sam Scarrino has paid his dues as a professional, working hard to acquire his skills and achieving a long list of honours in the business and a reputation for creating work that is overflowing with artistic quality along the way. The owner of Horvath Photography in Toronto, Sam is an internationally known Master Photographer and he's a regular on the training circuit, giving the others the benefit of his expertise in a series of highly rated workshops that have been delivered at venues all around the world.

"This will be my third year in a row speaking at The Societies' Convention," he says, "and it's such a special place for me as I enjoy seeing and meeting new friends from the UK and all over Europe. I've been a member of The Societies for around five years now, and my programmes have always been about posing and lighting fundamentals, while I'll also touch on fundamentals relating to the business of photography at times as well."

Always highly popular wherever he teaches, Sam bases his workshops around personal experience and the challenges he's found within his own career, both on the technical and the business fronts. He first started acquiring his technical and people skills shooting weddings for his parents' photography business, and then after a few years where he didn't do so much photography, he made the decision at the age of 21 to look for work at the Toronto studio of Tibor Horvath, his aim being to learn, to grow and to become a Master photographer.

"I worked my way up," he says. "I started entering competitions and I worked really hard." Within a few years he had become a partner in the firm and by the age of 27 he had earned his Craftsman and Master degrees from the Professional Photographers of America. After seven years of working for the studio he was the co-owner of Horvath Photography and three years later he became the outright owner.

This was a period that saw Sam consolidate his achievements and he balanced his time between running a busy studio with picking up awards for his work in print competitions. Hard work was second nature to him, and he would be the principal photographer on two to three weddings every weekend, also taking on anything up to 120 portrait bookings a year. In many ways this was a mark of the success he was achieving, but with a young family behind the scenes it was too much and, after initially taking a step back from the teaching and the competition aspects of his career, Sam made the decision at the age of 39 to close his busy downtown studio and to relocate the business to a Victorian house in Thornhill, about 10 miles from his former base. He moved again two years ago to a loft-style modern space in the suburbs of Toronto. "We went from a lower-priced, higher-volume business to a higher-priced, lower-volume business," he says. This process was largely achieved by raising the starting prices and making the business more bespoke, something that immediately changed the nature of the clientele that was being attracted. Those who were looking for a cut-price deal were immediately discouraged and went to look elsewhere, while those who were left were the kind of clients who were looking for a particular level of quality and service, and were prepared to pay for the privilege.

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1st Published 01/11/2012
last update 09/12/2022 14:55:16

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