Chris Silva is a photographer and visual arts educator based in Santa Maria, California. His work lives in a Fine Art practice that blends documentary observation, environmental portraiture, and experimentation, with a focus on meaningful, thought provoking images rooted in place, presence, and lived experience. Working primarily in black and white, he uses light, composition, and atmosphere to shape photographs that feel honest while remaining clearly authored.
Chris works across film, digital, and a film digital hybrid workflow. His foundation in traditional processes informs his technical discipline and visual decisions, while his digital practice supports precision in refinement, sequencing, and presentation. That balance of craft and control allows him to move fluidly between spontaneous observation and intentional construction, without losing consistency in tone or message.
Chris’s storytelling began with light and a camera that still carries deep meaning. Shortly before he passed, his uncle, Richard Martinez, a proud member of the Yaqui Nation, placed a Nikon F3 in the hands of a thirteen-year-old Chris and trusted him to carry the legacy forward. His uncle named it “The Spirit Box,” and Chris continues to photograph with that same film camera today as a reminder that image making can honor memory, identity, and purpose.
Uncle Richard Martinez · In loving memoryThe Spirit Box · Nikon F3
That early foundation led him to Ernest Righetti High School, where Mr. Garcia’s legendary film class sparked a lasting love for creating moving pictures. After high school, Chris built a content creation business that took him across the United States and internationally, including projects in Japan and Cancun. His early work developed under Alias Productions, later evolving into Creative Silva, and most recently Cris & Laura Inspired EYE Images, alongside his wife, Laura. Over the years, he has worked across the medical field, extreme motorsports, music and entertainment, commercial photo and video production, weddings and portraiture, and brand development, including logo design, company branding, sign design and production, screen printing, and embroidery.
Chris continued building his craft through the Applied Arts and Design program at Allan Hancock College and later earned a Bachelor of Arts in Photography from Southern New Hampshire University. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Education, Design, and Technology, a reflection of his belief that he never stops learning and that growth is a lifelong practice. Today, he brings that full journey into the classroom as a Photography and Digital Arts teacher at Pioneer Valley High School, supported by a formal CTE teaching credential earned through Cal Lutheran University in partnership with VCOE. His work is anchored in a three part creative foundation of photography, graphic design, and video production, strengthened by a background in marketing and visual communication.
In addition to his Fine Art work, Chris is affiliated with Cris & Laura Inspired EYE Images and Creative Silva, where he applies the same standards of craft, clarity, and intention across commissioned projects. He works alongside his wife, Laura, an equally skilled and dedicated photography educator and industry professional. Together, they balance creative work and teaching with family life as parents of two daughters. Outside of the studio and classroom, they spend time outdoors exploring the Central Coast through off road and travel focused adventures that continue to shape their sense of place, story, and image making.
Whether he is building a photographic series, teaching the next generation of creatives, or creating work for clients, his goal remains the same: to produce photographs that invite reflection and stand up to time.
His Teachers & Mentors
The teachers and mentors who shaped his eye, gave him the tools, and inspired the work
Ernest Righetti High School
Robert Garcia
For 24 years, Robert Garcia taught film at Ernest Righetti High School, and in 1996 he founded the Righetti Film Festival so student work would finally have an audience. His legendary class sparked Chris’s lifelong love of making moving pictures. During a turbulent time in Chris’s young life, Garcia’s room became his refuge: he opened it before school, kept it open through class and lunch, and stayed late until he closed it down, always leaving a place for Chris.
Allan Hancock College
David Passage
Fine arts and photography faculty at Allan Hancock College, David Passage taught and exhibited on the Central Coast for decades before retiring in 2018. In his classrooms Chris built the technical discipline and way of seeing that still anchor his work. He believed in Chris so fully that, when Chris was an eighteen-year-old in his first year of college, Passage gifted him his entire darkroom: an Omega enlarger and all of the chemistry.
Allan Hancock College
Robin Smith
At Allan Hancock College, Robin Smith challenged Chris to think in story. Smith showed him how to build cohesive narrative in moving pictures, shaping the way Chris still structures and sequences his films.
Mentor · Studio SB
Andy Samarasena
After college, Chris apprenticed under Andy Samarasena, a Santa Barbara photographer with more than thirty years behind the camera whose portraits range from weddings to Morgan Freeman and Olivia Newton-John. Andy brought Chris into the field to learn the working life of a professional, and what began as an apprenticeship became a lifelong mentorship and friendship.
Southern New Hampshire University
Traeton Garl
Chris earned his Bachelor of Arts in Photography studying under Traeton Garl. A fine art photographer with more than thirty years behind the camera and an MFA from the Academy of Art University, Garl teaches one simple idea: look through the camera and capture what you see and feel. He was not Chris’s only photography professor in university, but he was the one who pushed hardest, refused to accept mediocre work, and made Chris dig deep to find the emotion in his images.
