Eric Slaughenhaupt first became fascinated with photography at a young age as the oldest son of a career Army officer after his father returned from assignments in East Asia with boxes of slide film depicting the lush landscapes of Korea & Vietnam.  Often he would take out the slide projector alone and look at giant pictures up on the basement wall in one of the 13 homes he would live in during his father's military career.  He attributes his learning to adapt to a variety of geographical environments to his attraction of varied landscape photographic genres.

As a high school sophomore, Eric began taking his own pictures as a yearbook photographer in Tuscany, Italy while attending school on a military base.  It wasn't hard to fall in love with photography while getting to visit Naples, Sicily, Venice, Rome, the Po Valley and Florence on school trips as well as exploring the local surroundings of his seaside Tirrenia neighborhood.  This is where he learned to develop his own black & white film and prints under the guidance of Italian photographer Vito Siciliano. 

Over the next 20 years he became the official family photographer documenting graduations, weddings, births & family gatherings.  It was while watching a Ken Burns documentary on baseball with the use of black & white photos that the art and storytelling that photography offered was rekindled.  Eric started his photography training at UC Berkeley in California and later with photographer Todd Pierce in Colorado and at the Working With Artists Studio under Greg Cradick. 

Eric was attracted to landscape photography like many others through the prints of Ansel Adams, as well as the influences of Edward Weston, John Fielder, Galen Rowell and the talented photographers of National Geographic.  He started roaming the northern California country side of Marin, Sonoma and Lake Counties capturing Pacific seaside vistas, oak covered valleys and tidal flats as he started constructing a portfolio.  

Fortunately, after 25 years on the Pacific Coast and post-graduate work in business and corporate finance, the sale of his corporate employer gave him the opportunity to return to Colorado where his father had been stationed 30 years earlier.  Colorado had always been his favorite state with its rugged and stunning peaks & valleys.  Within an hour of his mountain home at 9,000 feet of elevation, he can experience a variation of landscapes which provide a broad canvas of images to capture that is difficult to surpass anywhere.  His images also encompass Utah, Oregon and Pennsylvania. 

In 2006, Eric was awarded Best in Category by National Photo Awards, for the print "Dallas Divide Aspen Sunburst".