Back when the Apollo program was headline news, Syl Arena, then a precocious eight-year old, “borrowed” his father’s new-fangled Polaroid camera, climbed up into an orange tree and made his first solo photograph - a snapshot of a baby dove. Later that year, his great-aunt gave him a Brownie 626 camera to feed his fascination. Syl’s affliction for making photographs has remained steadfast for over 40 years.

In college, Syl studied at Brooks Institute of Photography and then earned a BFA in photography at the University of Arizona. As a student, his favorite cameras spanned the gamut from 4×5 to a homemade, 20×24 pinhole. Syl mastered the zone system of black and white printing. Then, during his retro-phase, worked in a number of 19th-century media, such as cyanotypes and carbon prints.

Today, Syl photographs the people, lifestyles and products of central California for advertising, editorial, and corporate clients. Whether it’s a single glass of wine or a group of winemakers, America’s most popular rose or the man who bred it, the world’s fastest sailboat or the team that races it, Syl has the expertise and the personality to create memorable photographs — both on location and in the studio.

Syl employs state-of-the-art, purely digital workflows from image capture to final output. Pure digital is the best solution for photography that needs to be color-critical, tasked to a variety of media, or produced rapidly on your premises.

Syl is also an expert at shooting for CMYK reproduction. He understands that not every color can be faithfully reproduced on the pages of a magazine or catalog. More importantly, Syl can guide you through the alternatives - both during the shoot and in post-production. An innovator in portable, tethered shooting, Syl can tie his camera directly into his color-profiled computer workstation on location so that you can make decisions about critical color during the shoot.

From his home in Paso Robles, Syl can easily access locations in northern and southern California and throughout the San Joaquin Valley within a few hours. Give him a bit more time and he’ll get to any location you can think of.