I was born and raised in London, UK with an English father (that’s the Farren bit) and Portuguese mother (that’s the Roberto part). I lived in Greenwich in the southeast part of the city and was lucky enough to travel twice a year to see my grandparents in the rural Alentejo region of Portugal. This gave me a unique opportunity as a child, experiencing one of the world’s busiest and bustling cities juxtaposed against a very small rural village in the countryside of Europe that was decades behind in terms of development. To give you an idea of the level of development in the country at the time, my grandparents hand tilled their land with two cows and a plow and lived in a house with no electricity or phone line.

From an early age, experiencing these two very different ways of life cultivated an interest in people, cultures, places and societies. This, I believe, is what ultimately drove me to study Geography at Queen Mary University/College London and follow that interest in people and place. My geography studies were based in human geography rather than physical, think more sociology than mountains and rivers. After finishing university, I took a gap year to spend time living in Portugal and then in the French alps to do a ski season and brush up on my French a little while I was at it.

Coming back to London, it was time to find a more serious job, having spent over a year roaming around Europe. I was lucky enough to be selected as part of Transport for London’s national recruitment program for graduate traffic engineers. I had always envisaged working at the local government level to hopefully make a positive change on life for people within my community. This opportunity gave me the chance to develop a set of skills in road traffic management and planning. I was the guy controlling the traffic light signal timings in some of the busiest part of London and worked on the Olympic bid for the city (which we won) and the traffic congestion zone implementation (less popular but equally interesting).

How did I end up here in the US? That’s my wife's doing! On a night out in London, I was lucky enough to stumbled into a lovely American lady, who moved to London a year later to pursue her degree and I married 4 years after that! We then moved back to her part of the world as we weighed up where we would settle, and ultimately ended here in Boston, in New England (vs old), this wonderful corner of the US.

So, photography, I should really cover that I suppose. Back in 2005 I picked up a friend’s camera while on a snowboarding trip to Italy and took a day to wander around the small mountain town with it and was instantly hooked. It was such a wonderful way to view the world and capture landscapes and the people in them. I didn’t study photography at school, it came into my life after that period, but I took all and every opportunity to teach myself what was needed to capture images. I started in landscape photography and before moving to the US in 2010 had started to photograph weddings in the UK while still working as a traffic engineer.

The move to the US gave me a clean break and starting point. I had very much enjoyed my work as a traffic engineer back in London, but this was a moment to give photography a try as a career and not just a hobby. I started photographing weddings and events, and while I enjoyed that immensely, it wasn’t what had initially drawn me into photography. Landscapes and people and space were what had piqued my interest, and my geography degree and other life experiences had that grounding as well.

After we came close to moving back to the UK in 2014, I decided to move into the world of architectural photography. My personal work had been city-based landscapes, as this seemed to be where I found most of my enjoyment and creativity with photography. From there on, I have not looked back and this is where I find my journey has brought me to today. Photographing architecture has allowed me to mesh two things that I love, the study of people, place and environment and the medium of photography. It can take a minute to get to where you’re supposed to be, and I’ve been lucky enough to have had experiences and opportunities that have brought me to where I am now.

I hope that I can bring some of those experiences and photographic skills to the table to help capture and document your Boston or New England architectural photography project, so that you can share your vision with the world.

If you've made it this far thanks for taking the time to hear my story. I would love to hear yours, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Roberto.