Rafel has been enchanted by photography for over 15 years. An Art Center College of Design graduate; he analyzes light and how it falls up on his subjects. He is a Los Angeles native, but he has another home away from home. Traveling between Colima, Mexico and Los Angeles has made him aware of the similarities and contast between the two worlds. Growing up in South Central and East L.A. has given him a colorful spectrum of urban society and Mexico's rural realities.

He also has an eye for fashion, growing up with a mother in the apparel industry exposing him early in life of the beauty of textites, human form, and apparel design, all amalgamating into one vision. He is a collector, technical observer, researcher of culture, and the subconscious nuances that inform the viewer of memories long forgotten, only to be rediscovered like found photos of a former time.

He recently traveled to New Orleans on the eve of the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina studing the many laters and textures of the Cresent City. Cruz also volunteered at the Hollywood Braille institute in searc of visual interpretations from the visually impaired, mentoring photography students and traveling along with The Braille institute Victory Play Group on assignment for Fishwrap Magazine. "I was asked what would be my most uncomfortable situation, which would be the lack of vision." The absence of vision, as in a physical loss of sight, and the psychological loss of perception.