David Allio walked into his first photography class at the University of Virginia without any type of formal training whatsoever. “The very first class I’d ever attended, I was the instructor,” Allio said. “There was just no formal form of
David Allio walked into his first photography class at the University of Virginia without any type of formal training whatsoever.
“The very first class I’d ever attended, I was the instructor,” Allio said. “There was just no formal form of academics for this. People just don’t understand how much science and art there is in it.”
But it looks as though he managed to get by throughout the years. Allio celebrates his 33rd anniversary of a career in photography this weekend.
Just this past June, Allio’s photography made it into what he calls the trifecta of sports magazines: Sports Illustrated, ESPN — The Magazine and The Sporting News.
Currently, Allio is one of the featured artists in this month’s NY Arts Magazine.
“That just came out of the blue,” Allio said. “One of the guys there dropped my name and said ‘you’ve got to get this guy.’”
The image selected for the magazine is entitled “Sisters in Skin and Stone.” It’s a picture of model Catalina Lissett Fontanez with “Dufay,” an original sculpture by A.A. Solomon, originally commissioned for the musee-solomon gallery last year.
Allio grew up in rural Virginia and currently lives here on the Eastside. He admits that the city had never suited him and that he likes the laid- back, country style of living better than the fast-paced life.
Even though his works have been featured in major publications, his colleagues still urge him to move to the city.
“All the major magazines are based in New York and if you want a job you have to be in their faces all the time if you’re not working,” Allio said. “But I’ve never been a fan of New York and the journalism Mafia there.”
Somehow, Allio has been able to break that misconception about being in the city.
“I don’t care if you’re in Las Vegas or Kaua‘i,” he said. “The difference is in the actual marketing.”
But it helps that he caught a lucky break early on.
“My first clipping was on the front cover of the sports section for the Washington Post,” he said. “Every time I needed a job I took that with me and said, ‘Here’s why you should hire me.’”
Allio does sports and nature photography, but doesn’t want to be lumped into one category or the other.
“I think if you do just the one thing all the time you get burned out,” he said. “If you stick to a certain thing you just get stale, you don’t continue to grow. I always prefer the challenge.”
Allio has had to change with the times throughout his years but has always been open to it.
“You have to constantly be changing because technology changes, the medium changes and the generations change,” he said. “I’ve been around for a long time, so long that at least two generations have come through since I started in photography.”
He made a clean break from film to digital in 2001.
“Some photographers will keep their film camera in the background just in case. So they have something to fall back on,” he said. “But I made a clean break. I figured if I was going to jump in, I might as well jump in with both feet.”
Allio shortly made a jump of a different kind. He and his wife, Jacqueline, first came to Kaua‘i in 2003.
“We were just overwhelmed by the beauty and serenity,” he said. “We started looking around for places. We wanted to be out where we could grow things and be a part of the community.”
While he’s here and not away for work, Allio conducts group and private lessons. His upcoming workshops for next week quickly sold out but there are more to come.
“Most of the time it’s people coming to visit and they want to know how to shoot waterfalls and get good aerial shots,” Allio said.
For now, his biggest commercial buyer is in Las Vegas, but he will continue to live here.
Original Allio photographs and artworks can be viewed online at www.davidallio.com. A calendar of his workshops is also posted on the Web site.
• Lanaly Cabalo, lifestyle writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 237) or lcabalo@kauaipubco.com.
