Travel with our mentors and try out all of the latest equipment from Nikon! Including world class digital SLRs, Nikkor lenses and the Coolpix line of Digital Cameras.

Mentor | Essdras M. Suarez

Essdras M Suarez was born in Panama City, Panama in 1966. He completed his high school education in Panama and then proceeded to continue his studies in the US. He graduated with a degree in Journalism specializing in photojournalism at the University Florida where he graduated in 1993.

While pursuing his photojournalism degree, he had the opportunity to work as an assistant/intern for a couple of National Geographic photographers while on assignment in Central and South America in the summer of 1992. He also completed a second internship with the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. He had his final internship in 1995 at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Co where he was their intern for three consecutive six-month terms.

He was later hired by the Rocky. It is in here where he shared the 2000 Spot News Pulitzer with his coverage of the Columbine Massacre of 1999. That same year he was the recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy International Photojournalism, a Headliner Award Feature Photography award and a News Press Photographer Association award for his story called “Osveli's Journey” in which he documented the story of a 14-year old Guatemalan boy who died in a car- crash accident while being smuggled into the US.

Suarez has also received numerous other awards throughout his 14-year professional career as a photojournalist. Among these are awards by the Colorado Press Association, Boston Press Photographer's Association, the Society of Newspaper Design, the Thomas Lowell Travel Writer's Association and the last two years he has won the Society of Newspaper Editors' national top honor in the category of feature photography.

Among his international news assignments, Essdras has covered the war in Iraq, the Indonesia tsunami aftermath, the 2004 Haitian coup against president Jean Bertrand Aristide, the Gaza strip evacuation in Israel and others.

He was hired at the Boston Globe in the beginning of 2002 where he still works as a staff photographer. While there he has developed a niche in travel photojournalism. These assignments have taken him throughout the world to places like the African desert, the Russian tundra and the tropical jungles of South East Asia and many more.

He has recently been focusing his attention on teaching photojournalism and photography workshops in New England and abroad in places like Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador.