ALUMNI PROFILES
The Walk For Cancer event in Daytona Beach, Florida, with participants crossing the Main Street Bridge on Oct. 27, 2018.
Duane Fernandez
Award-Winning Photojournalist As an award-winning photojournalist for the Daytona Times, Duane Fernandez has covered several of the most impactful stories that have grabbed headlines around the country in recent years. Among them are the Trayvon Martin murder trial in Sanford, Florida in 2013; the hate-fueled shooting at Charleston, South Carolina’s Emmanuel AME Church in 2015; and Muhammad Ali’s funeral in Louisville, Kentucky in 2016.
States,” said Duane, with a smile and shake of his head. “Who would have ever thought a kid coming out of the housing projects of Hartford, Connecticut would grow up to do that?” Duane received his first camera, a Minolta that came with four flash bulbs, as a Christmas gift from his father when he was seven years old. It was a gift choice that was inspired by what he had seen on the popular legal drama, “Perry Mason.” Though he always enjoyed photography, it took many years for that interest to become something more than a hobby. Growing up, Duane did what he described as physical work in body shops, or at Colt Firearms, which was headquartered in Hartford. He was married, later divorced, and became disabled. It was at that point, his love of photography re-emerged.
The Daytona State graduate with an AS in Photography regularly covers the Daytona 500, and in 2016, photographed President Barack Obama at a rally in Kissimmee, an event that still resonates him. “I got to photograph the President of the United
“After I became disabled, it felt like a new chapter in my life. What am I going to do? I started walking to lose weight and realized even though you live in a neighborhood, you don’t really know your neighborhood when you’re just driving through it. But when you walk, you start seeing things you’ve never
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noticed. So I bought a camera, my first digital camera.” Duane enrolled in Tunxis Community College and a professor gave him a piece of advice that changed his life. “He said one of the best schools in the country for photography is in Daytona Beach.” Daytona Beach, ironically, was already on Duane’s radar. He had first visited the city for Bike Week in 2002 and had grown up a NASCAR fan, so he made the call to Daytona State College, and after talking with an admissions counselor, made the decision to re-locate, something he had already been considering. Duane said the program at Daytona State, where he started in 2009, allowed him to explore many different types of photography, including urban photography. He would often stop to take pictures of the things he saw as he was out riding his bike, many of them simple things that told a story of the community. They were stories that needed to be told, about people who may not have a way to do so themselves, or places that might otherwise be forgotten. When combined with his interests in civil rights and history, Duane’s talent, not just as a photographer, but as a photojournalist,
Photos courtesy of Duane Fernandez
