When he was about 7 or 8, Erin Feinblatt got his first camera, a gift from his grandmother. The Kodak Instamatic 100 — a mostly plastic, easy-load point-and-shoot — was the perfect starter camera, and Feinblatt took to it right away. Soon enough, he remembers, he commandeered his dad’s “real cameras,” a Canon AE-1 and a Pentax Spotmatic.
“Several members of my extended family were avid photographers,” Feinblatt said. “I have fond memories of the slideshows following our family vacations growing up.
Feinblatt grew up in the San Fernando Valley and got a history degree — plus a double minor in Spanish and business — at the University of San Diego before working in habitat restoration at Torrey Pines State Reserve. That experience helped him land a job monitoring threatened and endangered seabirds and shorebirds throughout California and Oregon for several years.
