Coming from a middle class background, money for artistic endeavors wasn't easy to come by, but When an opportunity arose to use photography as his creative outlet, Benja took to the new passion like a fish to water. More than 22 years went by before he was able to take photography seriously when one of his friends lent him a camera and inadvertently jump started a career. A year later Sebastian Nunez, legendary water man, introduced Benja to scuba diving, and with another borrowed camera, an underwater one at that, Benja took his passion into a new direction.

Now almost 17 years to the day he began focusing on underwater photography, Benja has explored 48 countries, has been published in an unnumbered amount of magazines, newspapers, books, and calendars around the world. Every 2 years he returns to his native Chile to exhibit his work, which might include diving in the red sea, climbing the Himalayan range, or simple portraits of people he encounters on his journey around the planet.

Through his love of photography, Benja has found a deeper appreciation for the ocean and founded Mares del Sur, a non-profit organization that protects the oceans around the world. In addition to his freelance photography, Benja is also the photo editor of Mar Adentro Magazine as well as a happy husband living on the island of Maui in Hawaii for the last 5 years. He spends half of his time between the ocean and the mountains.