Born in Cairo to Armenian parents and raised for part of his childhood in Cairo, Arto was a frequent visitor at his godfather's racing stable. He developed a deep love for the beauty and form of the horses, attempting to capture their images with pencils, paints and photographs. Over the long haul, the camera became Arto's tool of choice.

"Right from early school, I was always drawing and interested in creating images," says the creative mind behind Arto Photography. "I started shooting seriously at age 16". By the time Arto had reached his teens, the family had moved to Laval, Quebec. Arto went on to take a two-year course in commercial photography, graduating head of the class. Arto preferred medium and large-format cameras for the superior quality of the images they could produce. During that time, Arto had already built a client base for his commercial work. Connections in the equestrian world helped him break into the realm of equine photography, which now makes up part of his business.

He says drumming up work has been a matter of showing people what can be done, especially since he switched from film to the latest high end digital technology. "I want to knock their socks off. I want to show them things in a way they haven't seen them before."

The switch to digital photography gave Arto new options not previously available from film. He finds the high end digital equipment exceeding in quality to medium format. Digital offers finer control over the final result, along with a much faster turnaround time and better commercial reproduction, as well as many other benefits.