Award-winning Photographer Excels at Transforming an Image into Extraordinary Art

At first David Margolis was going to be a dentist.

College chemistry cured him of that.

It made sense to go into business. Growing up in a bedroom community in western Massachusetts, David admits, “Art was the furthest thing from my interests you could possibly have.”

Today David is an award-winning photographer with stacks of awards from major festivals and his pieces installed in the finest galleries in the northeast. He is also a regular at Rose Squared Art Shows, showing digital work that is both thought provoking and graphically inspired.

“What I’m doing now is really what I love to do,” said David, who also owns Skyview Survey, the largest aerial photography company on the East Coast.

His art journey started at Rochester Institute of Technology, where a diverse and eclectic mix of peers and professors introduced him to the different world of art. A degree in photography with a minor in graphic arts set him up to work for years as a cruise ship photographer, “My continuation of eye-opening experiences,” he said.

Life changes brought him home to New England and Skyview Survey, which dates back to 1946. Though his father owned the company that has since moved from New Haven to Stamford, Connecticut, David wanted to learn the business from the ground up. He grew skilled in blueprinting and screen printing done to support architects, work today done by computer.

“I had a squeegee one day and then a week later I could be out on the road banging doors to generate business,” said David, who earned an MBA along the way.

Two decades into the business that has since transitioned to aerial and architectural photography, David became intrigued about making his own art.

Sorting through photos, he began exploring triptych, cutting an image to divide it into three panels, each telling a story. He started in Photoshop, importing an image of a wave he snapped in the hamlet of Montauk, New York. From there, he experimented with “what if?” questions. He added layers of colors and drew swirls with the brush tool. The final product, Montauk, shows the top of a wave, where it breaks and finally, it settling into the sand.

“It all started with that base photo of nothing more than a wave breaking in Montauk,” David said. “I go with whatever inspiration I have.”

His experience taking photos in an office that is often in the clouds above the Hudson River led to a Statue of Liberty mosaic, which is essentially 19,601 identical images with layers of background colors, highlights and shadows.

Additional one-of-a-kind creations include wire figures atop multiple photos of one celebrity – Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Bob Marley and Freddy Mercury, for example.  The bendable figure, similar to a Billboard painter atop the image, makes the mosaic 3D.

David’s lenticular work – think of the eye seeing a moving image that changes depending on the viewer’s angle as in Cracker Jack collectible cards – is another asset in his portfolio.

Lenticular, he said, “opened up the introspective side of me.”

His bright, colorful work also includes a blue and white series that started with vacation photos. His lenticular works like his mosaics have no frame of reference. They’re strictly from his imagination.

David refers to his art as “process driven. I’m not an artist who draws. I can’t draw a straight line.”  Yet he has an artistic eye to create designs that are far more extraordinary in person than on the web.

Visit David Margolis Photography in 2025 at Rose Squared Art Shows in Spring Brookdale Park (June 21-22) and Fall Brookdale Park (Oct. 18-19).