The one and only Carlos Sanchez, a skilled photographer, artist, and avid wearer of beards, is also a professor here at Snow College who teaches many students, all of different levels and skill sets.
Aside from being a proficient and expert photographer, Carlos also happens to be a lord. His wife, whom he has five children with, gifted him land in Scotland for one of their anniversaries, bestowing him the title of Lord Carlos Sanchez.
As if his credentials of being a lord were not enough, Carlos has received a bachelor of Fine Art in Photography from Utah Valley University and now specializes in Fine Art Portraiture.
For any person involved in the art, their interest in photography has to start somewhere, and for Carlos that was in high school. “I took a photography class and my first time in the darkroom I experienced real magic.” Says Carlos, “There, we exposed a blank sheet of paper (photo paper) to some light and submerged it into a pool of chemicals, and as if from nowhere an image appeared before our very eyes. It was magical! And I've been hooked ever since.” Carlos’s love for photography and learning new things is partially what led him into teaching.
Along with the journey and discovery of new things, the different facets of photography have an almost never ending limit as to what one can explore and experiment with. Bram Kelson, a student of Carlos’s ART 1050 class, says,”Photography with Lord Sanchez is thoroughly enthralling and his love for photography is intoxicating. I love being able to create art through a digital medium with my friends.” With in-class discussions and activities, one can find it easy to better connect with the subject being taught in class. Carlos has been teaching students for upwards of eight years, both outside and inside Snow College, and plans to continue teaching for years to come. Carlos says teaching, “Helps me understand the concepts and techniques even better as I try to search for new ways to explain them to students,” and in doing so, he also gets to share what fascinates him with his students.
When asked what is something important about photography that people should know, Carlos mentions that photography is sometimes more than what it is. “Photography is communication, it speaks, it conveys thoughts, emotions, and messages. Especially in our media-saturated society today, we sometimes take for granted the power photography can have in communicating a message.”Although photography can be described as “capturing a moment in time,” it also is a way for someone to express themselves in a whole new way.
For Carlos, photography is a big part of both his work and personal life, so it’s not uncommon for his hobbies to involve his daily activities. If asked what he does for fun or in his spare time, Carlos may respond with, “I grow beards and I know stuff,” which roughly means he loves to learn, aside from photography and spending time with his family. “I cannot stop learning. I'm driven to learn more, to understand more, to explore more. And that's what I do when I'm not doing photography,” says Carlos.
Photography is all around in everyday life. Each photograph can influence an emotion or express a feeling when other ways might fail. Even if photography might not seem like an interesting course, students can benefit from not only the experience that is gained in the classroom, but the understanding of what photography is and what it can do in one’s personal life.