Hi, thanks for stopping by The Arbitrary Pixel, my name is Pedro and I like taking pictures.

I liked taking pictures ever since I was a kid. I must have inherited this from my mother. She was not a photographer but loved pictures. She had a very large collection of family pics that she loved to show to any one that would be willing to see them. I remember her sharing these memories, it was as if she relived them every time she shared a picture and the accompanying story. My mother bought a Kodak Instamatic camera when I was about 12. Soon I kind of took over the camera taking all the family pics and other stuff too. Eventually my mom gave me the camera seeing that I really like to take pictures. My time with the Instamatic was short lived it broke and that was the end of that. It was not till my late twenties  that I purchased  my first film SLR , a Canon Rebel. It was during this time that I really started learning and exploring photography. I took lots of pictures with that camera and it went with me everywhere. The camera still lives I pass it down to one of my kids that also likes taking pictures.

For me photographs are unique, capturing a place, a moment, a feeling maybe a smile or a frown , and then freezing it in time so we can share it with others. They are intimate, allowing others to see and experience the world through our eyes. Like my mom we can relive that moment , tell that story and share that experience.

When my children were young I took lots of portraits of them and the family. These are really special memories that I treasure. Today I mostly enjoy taking pictures of architecture and nature with a few odd and ends thrown in there to keep things interesting. Most of my photos are of Miami and surrounding areas, this is the place I call home. I shoot using a digital SLR camera but as time has passed and the cameras that come with our modern phones have gotten better and better I find myself shooting lots of pictures with my phone. It is also super convenient as I usually carry it with me all the time. So in this site you will see a combination of pictures from the DSLR and my cell phone. To this respect I feel that the cell phone which are really pocket size computers that include cameras have allowed everyone to be a photographer and a video maker, to be creative. I just love to see so many people taking pictures and sharing them on the many digital platforms. We can all be creative every day.

This site came about as an attempt to promote my photography, it was a companion to my Etsy store, Facebook and Instagram page. I long abandoned that goal. Today it serves as a place were I keep some of my creative stuff including the blog. Yeah, I like taking pictures and ever so often writing too.

If you like what you see you can see more of my pictures at:  www.flickr.com/photos/wideopen-project and on www.instagram.com/arbitrarypixel/

About the name and logo. As for the name I was trying to find something that went along well with my personality. I actually worked with cameras and one of the things that can go wrong with digital camera sensors are dead pixels. These just happen randomly or arbitrarily hence the name Arbitrary Pixel. The Logo comes about from my love of the sciences and history. The logo takes the form of an element on the periodic table reminding us of the chemical origins of film photography. The numbers that would normally stand for the atomic number and weight of the element are referencing and old photography adage called the Sunny 16 rule. This goes back to when people used manual film cameras. It was said that if you used ISO 100 film on a sunny day all you had to do was set your aperture to F16 and the shutter speed to 1/250 for a perfect exposure. So there you have it the origin story.