I was very lucky to have adventurous parents and because of them I grew up all over the world. I spent my childhood living in Africa, first Ethiopia, then Ghana and finally in Kenya, and when I was a teenager I lived two years in Bangkok and another two years in Rio de Janeiro.

When I was 18 I left my family to study in the USA at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which is where I spent some of the best years of my life. Then, after I received my Master's in IT, I moved to New York for a while and then to San Francisco for four years. However, after 14 years in the USA I decided I wanted to live in Europe and moved back to Italy in 2002.

I've been in Rome ever since, but not forever. There's just too much to see to stay in one place my whole life.

I started photography when I was 20 years old. I bought a Nikon 6006 camera with a cheap lens, took a beginner course at the local photography school and eventually set up a dark room at home. In my head I could always imagine rainy Sundays spent inside the darkroom making prints, but the reality is that I used it less than twice a year because of time constraints. For this reason I stayed at a very mediocre level for many years, often not taking any photos for months at a time.

When my girlfriend bought a digital compact camera during a trip to New York, I made fun of her, telling her that "real" photographs were made with clasic cameras and Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. Two days later I was leaving my Nikon at home and shooting everything I could with her little compact camera. What I discovered is that digital brought all the fun back into my hobby, leaving me free to experiment and train my eye, without worrying about buying film, development times, etc.

Now I shoot with a Nikon D7000 (and yes, I still use my girlfriends compact camera) and my passion has grown exponentially every day. In fact, I can't even go to the movies without bringing a camera. To this day, what I love most about photography is experimenting. I don't have a style because I purposely try to get as much diversity as I can from my work.

You can see much more of my work on:
www.flickr.com/abenedetti