Benedict J. Fernandez is a photojournalist and street photographer who captured the last year of Dr. King’s life in extraordinary visual detail. He published his photographs of King in a traveling portfolio called Countdown to Eternity (1993). Photography was originally Fernandez’s hobby. He worked as an engineer and crane operator in a shipyard of his native New York. When Fernandez finally turned his hobby into his life’s work, his first major portfolio called Riggers used men in the shipyard as his subject. He is internationally known as a photographer and mentor to aspiring photographers.