Featured Member

    David Allio                  

David Allio is an international award-winning photojournalist and digital artist. His professional portfolio ranges from sports, editorial and corporate to glamour, fine art and portraiture. Since 1974, his unique images have appeared on album covers, postcards, posters, billboards, calendars, display advertising and in movies, books, catalogs, magazines and other periodicals. His commercial client list includes a variety of Fortune 500 companies.

For more than three decades, Allio's professional career has been defined by his vivid editorial and feature images. He is currently a contract photographer with the New York Times, Knight Ridder, AI Wire, United Press International (UPI Photo) and Gannett (USA Today).  

Since 1978, this self-taught photographer has been a featured instructor and lecturer at a variety of photographic workshops and seminars. His instructional topics have ranged from traditional darkroom techniques to elements of digital sports photography. His audiences have ranged from high school students to senior citizens.  

His photography and digital art images have been exhibited in museums, art galleries and private shows throughout the United States , in Japan , Australia , New Zealand and several European countries. His original Limited Edition Prints and Commissioned Works are prized by private collectors worldwide. Since the start of the new millennium, Allio has won special awards in the annual Photography Unlimited international photo competition. His most recent recognition came for a landscape image from Kaua'i, Hawai'i .Throughout his 30-plus-year career, he has won an assortment of American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AARWBA) awards for motorsports photography. He is a former official NASCAR photographer and spent 17 years as a contract sports marketing photographer for the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company at various AMA, IMSA, NASCAR, NHRA and USHRA series events. Since the mid-1970s, he has served as the chief track photographer at ten different race tracks. Allio is currently the Chief Track Photographer at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In November 1999, David Allio was selected by Lycos , Italy , as one of the top four modern erotic artists/photographers in the world. According to Tatiana Tartuferi, Editor, Lycos Bertelsmann: "Allio's work represents a great mix of traditional influences in modern artistic techniques."   In 2001, Allio and his images - photographs and digital artworks - were the subject of a 30-minute feature broadcast on PBS. The program entitled "Impressions" was produced by South Carolina Educational Television. In 2005, Allio became a Charter Member of the Digital Imaging Association.

"I began exploring the world of digital imaging in the mid-1980s," Allio said. "At the time, digital imaging was more technical than creative. But, I had clients that were interested in the image delivery system. So, I learned as much as I could - from modem initialization strings to image compression. The evolution from 300 baud modems to high-speed Internet has been crucial to the growth of my profession."  

Born in Virginia , David Allio is a graduate of the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Communications and Visual Arts. When not traveling on assignment, David and his wife, Jacqueline, a UVaW summa cum laude and CPA, reside in Kapa'a, Kaua'i, Hawai'i.  As a member of the HTML Writer's Guild, Allio serves as his own webmaster and maintains a website of contemporary and award-winning images at http://www.davidallio.com.