Young Photographer Selected as Featured Artist at Harbour View Gallery

A few years ago, Eli Atack's aunt gave him his first camera.

“I used it at that time,” he said. “I was told I had a photographer’s eye.”

He quickly improved his camera, then improved it again.

He now uses a Canon Rebel SL2.

Throughout the month of July, the 14-year-old, who attends Fletcher School (on Pine Island Road), will be a featured artist at Harbour View Gallery in Cape Coral.

Atack, pronounced A-tack, specializes in nature photography.

“I love being out in nature and seeing animals,” he says, “and getting a really good, clear, sharp photo with good lighting is really satisfying.”

Sometimes he also photographs landscapes.

He took photos locally at Six Mile Cypress Slough and New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia.

He says his favorite photo is one he took of burrowing owls. (Atack lives in Cape Coral, with countless burrowing owls.)

This year, he won an honorable mention in the Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife Burrowing Owl Photo Contest.

He had heard about the Harbor View Gallery, an artist cooperative in Cape Coral, and applied to join. (Artist cooperatives are places where artists pay to belong and exhibit their work.) He applied, and a week later the board accepted him.

“They feature a new artist every month and it’s very popular,” Atack says. “I had to wait over a year to get my spot for next July.”

He plans to sell about 30 to 40 of his works, including stickers, posters, wall canvases and plaques.

As a co-op artist, “you get 60 percent of what you sell,” he says.

“It's quiet to go out (to take pictures). You don't find many animals around people. You have to track them or be very patient. You can't get close or they run away or fly away.”

He uses an ES 300mm telephoto zoom lens to capture his animal images.

“You can get very close-up images of the animal without getting too close to it,” he says.

He also uses a photo editor afterwards to adjust sharpness and brightness.

Atack is also interested in sports, citing baseball, football, pickleball and soccer as his favorites.

He doesn't have any photographers that he follows or admires and doesn't plan on making a career out of it.

For now, it's just a fun hobby. ¦