It’s a long way from Warsaw to Toronto, longer still if you have to dodge the Communist bureaucracy to get there. And that’s exactly what Renata Ratajczyk did over a decade ago to follow her dream of becoming a photographer and, from there, a photodigital artist.

The daughter of a Polish diplomatic attachŽ, she began to take pictures with a 35mm Konica automatic in her early teens as she and her family traveled through Europe and the Middle East. From time to time she even lived abroad with her father while he worked on various projects. Little by little, the thought of becoming a professional photographer began to grow- nurtured by the love of art that her parents had instilled in her. She describes her favorite artists with short, word sketches:

"Caravaggio (great lighting and colors, dramatic gestures and showing emotions), Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael Santi (perfect and simple composition, attention to detail, almost 3-D effects, elegance, perfect design), Michelangelo (perfect in showing the beauty of human body, variety of facial expressions). The Pre-Raphaelite group of painters for their symbolism and allusion to mythology as well as for often depicting the fantasy world."

Depicting the fantasy world is one of Renata’s passions. She says: "I photograph because I just can’t live without it. I just feel I have to do it. It is my destiny. In the beginning I mostly photographed to preserve the moment. Now my images are more created than taken. I often imagine the image in my mind and later create it using variety of techniques. Recently, I’ve been using the computer more and more."

Renata shoots her original photos on different films- both B&W and color negatives, and color transparencies. She scans prints herself, but lets her service bureau do her slide and color negative scanning. Her PC has 64 MB of RAM, 7 GB of hard disk space, and both CDRW (rewritable CD) and Zip Drives. An Epson Stylus Color 600 is used to proof her images before they’re sent out for final output to transparencies or color negatives.