Strength Photograph - Limited Edition of 10

I am retired from more than 50 years of commercial and industrial photography, now I have the time to pursue the pleasure of the art. I am the third generation of photographers in the Brignolo family. I was presented with a Brownie Box camera for my seventh birthday. My father, an internationally renowned corporate photojournalist, explained the cost of film and told me to make every shot count. He taught me how to develop the film and print my best pictures when I finished my first roll. I was hooked. I accompanied him on several local assignments and shadowed him with my Brownie. He was impressed with my results. On my 13th birthday, I was presented with a Pentax single lens reflex 35mm camera. Now I had 36 exposures per roll, but my father cautioned me, “Remember, make every shot count.” And I did. I immediately joined the photo club at my junior high school and the advisor thought I was good enough to take pictures for the yearbook. By the time I was 16 years of age, I was photo editor of my high school yearbook and a photo stringer for Time Magazine in the Fairfield County, Connecticut area. I am a self-taught photographer. I adhered to the “make every shot count” rule which taught me to compose each shot with a critical eye. For practice, I would copy still-life photographs out of magazines until my photographs looked exactly the same as the magazine versions. At 18 I attended engineering school in Bridgeport, CT, and worked as a photographer for an advertising agency in Stamford, CT. The 40-minute commute as well as the long hours were not conducive to a decent grade point average. The solution: I started working for the Development Department at The University of Bridgeport as their photographer full-time and continued my classes. Upon graduation, I opened a photo studio in Westport, Connecticut. I attracted Fortune Top 100 Companies located in the New York City metropolitan area. I continued to photographically reinvent myself until the culmination of all my creative abilities resulted in the formation of Focal Group, a market and advertising company. As Owner and Creative Director of Focal Group, it gave me the perfect environment to hone my photographic skills as well as cultivate a desire to inspire my creativity from within. Retirement was the perfect opportunity to pursue this fresh approach to showcase the world. My creative approach to marketing campaigns allowed Focal Group to be part of several new product development teams.