Eric Bowden has been "hiding" behind a camera of some sort for over 25 years. His first shots were way back in the 80's with a simple Instamatic that produced square pictures that were fuzzy at best and lacked any colors coming even close to vibrant. He started getting more into taking pictures during middle school, even taking an evening class in film development. During high school he was given his first "real" camera - a Minolta XG-1 SLR manual focus camera. From there it was nonstop click-city!

Eric was born in Florida into an Air Force family. Following his father over the next 20-some years as an Air Force Brat redefined the concept of "variety is the spice of life", moving about a dozen times by the time he was 20! His middle school and high school years were spent in Germany throughout the 80's which left him with tons of photographic opportunities. His parents loved to travel and Eric and his brother were almost always in tow, Eric with his camera bag slung over his shoulder and finger on the trigger.

Doing most of his "growing up" in Germany - teen years, middle and high school - is one of Eric's most valued memories. He was able to travel to over a dozen countries, camera in tow, and capture a lot of Europe on film. One of his favorite travel activities was actually climbing the church and cathedral bell towers and taking pictures from the top! He loved capturing the different buildings and architecture from different countries and across centuries. He still has crates of pictures from living overseas.

Growing up in Germany he developed an appreciation for sports cars. College netted Eric a business degree in Marketing and an MBA, both with Summa Cum Laude honors. In 1996, not long after finishing his undergraduate degree, Eric finally bought one of his dreams - a Dodge Stealth sports car. Researching and communicating over the fledgling Internet, he met a network of friends, and later co-brainchilded what eventually became the largest online owners club for the Stealth and 3000GT sports cars. He attended club "gatherings" and quickly became known as the "official photographer" of the club.

In 2000 Eric made the jump to digital photography picking up an Olympus 2020. The digital medium and essentially unlimited "film" allowed him to shoot as much as as the batteries would allow. Trips went from maybe 5 rolls of film (100-150 pictures) to thousands! If it moved, he shot it... If it didn't move, it got shot multiple times with different settings to get the RIGHT shot! Virtually endless shooting allowed Eric to try different ideas in photography, taking more pictures to see what worked and what didn't. Being able to see the shot instantly provided quick feedback so he could improve his technique and go for the unique views. Eric grew to chase the view that others missed, not take a picture that everyone else might take, but find something special in something ordinary.

2001 bought about major change in Eric's life - the banking job said "thanks, and have a nice life." Later that year he turned his hobby, his car, into his next career by getting on at 3SX Performance from Day One, and used his business degrees to help build the company from scratch. His photography played a major role as he did ALL of the product photography for the website, which was selling performance car parts to owners around the world! That became one of the unique draws to the site and company, it featured vibrant and clear pictures of the products they sold, not just generic photos picked from other websites.

Over the years since "going digital", Eric has taken over 250,000 pictures of just about everything imaginable - from sightseeing trips all over the US to bugs in his backyard - helping him to sharpen his eye as a photographer. Visit the Galleries to see some samples of his photographic work.

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Evelyn Bowden is a native of the Philippines, growing up in the capital city of Manila with her parents, brother, and sister. She grew up smart, earning a Masters degree in Civil Engineering, and teaching at MIT - Mapua Institute of Technology! She was blessed in 1997 with her daughter, Courtney, and raised her as a single mom.

A teaching program, VIF or Visiting International Faculty, brought her to Charlotte in 2004 for a 3 year contract teaching mathematics at Northwest School of the Arts, a magnet high school for artistically gifted students. She excelled there, becoming one of the student's favorite teachers.

In March of 2005, Eric and Evelyn's paths crossed late one Friday evening. Eric was a part time waiter at Red Rocks and Evelyn and a couple of her friends were looking for a late night coffee, but the Caribou they frequented was closed. So they stopped in at Red Rocks since it was right across from their apartment complex, arriving only 15 minutes before the restaurant closed. Long story short, Evelyn and her friends left 2 hours later and Eric had her phone number. They each have their own version of "the story" but they are pretty close and ultimately end up in the same place.

Courtney joined her mother in the United States in the summer of 2005, starting the third grade at Rama Elementary, and following in her mother's footsteps, was the number one student in her 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes, and was accepted to Randolph Middle School. She is looking forward to tackling the new challenges of middle school.

Everything was going very well between the threesome - Eric, Evelyn, and Courtney - and on March 5th, 2006, to the surprise of everyone he knew except one, Eric proposed to Evelyn at the top of Chimney Rock. They were married in August of the same year.

With Evelyn's 3 year contract with VIF completed at the end of the '06-'07 school year, she decided that rather than continue to teach, she would rather get back into her area of expertise. In June she landed a job at S&ME, an engineering firm in south Charlotte where she is part of the Construction Materials Engineering & Testing team.

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On October 7th, 2007, our family officially became FOUR! Almost making it exactly on the "due date", but putting up a 20 hour fight and taking down three shifts of nurses and doctors, Calvin Charles Bowden was born just before noon the 7th!

Calvin was born weighing in at a hefty and healthy 8 pounds 13 ounces and stretching 21 inches - no wonder Evelyn kept getting kicked in the ribs, she started at only 95 pounds!! Once he finally sprang free - 'finally' being the operative term as the 20 hours of labor was topped with over an hour of actual pushing, pulling assistance by the doctor, and the threat of skipping to a C-section (not after all THAT said Evelyn!) - it took all of about 4 minutes for Eric to get the shutter going, snapping off a couple hundred pictures in the first few hours! There were plenty of friends and family calling for pictures.