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| About me |
How it all started
I was born in Russia, in a remote town in Eastern Siberia. My parents are geologists and from early age I spent all my summers in expeditions traveling and camping in remote places. I was left pretty much on my own in a camp and I spent a lot of time wondering alone in the wilderness. Nature was my home, not the city. The way you spend you childhood is imprinted in you for the rest of your life. As an adult I am destined to live in a city, but I never felt that it is my true home. This longing feeling for lost nature and open wide spaces has brought me to landscape photography and love for travel.
But I have not yet discovered photography until my family moved to the United States. We started to make long road trips from Chicago to Seattle and Los Angeles visiting all national parks on our way. I had a small cheap camera which I used to make hundred of pictures. But it was no more than the way to document our trips. And then in of the trips somewhere in Montana in old dusty photo store I bought a book on landscape photography. It changed my life. I realized that there is more to photography than snapshots. It is art. And I can do it.
In landscape photography it all clicked in perfectly for me: my love for nature and travel and a vivid sense of design and composition I always had. I immediately began my self-education in the craft of photography. I made a conscience decision early on to focus only on digital photography even though it was in its early phase. In the beginning I had to use a film camera and I made transparencies which I scanned with a film scanner. Photoshop became my digital darkroom. These days I enjoy using professional digital photo equipment which produces images on a par in quality with old film. I spend a lot of time and take great efforts in preparing each photograph to make high quality prints which I print myself.
One of the things I enjoy with photography is a learning process. Every day is a step up. Every day you learn something new. It is not only about craft and technical aspects of photography. Photography is, or can be, a way of life. Photography as any art is a tool of exploring yourself. And it is quite a journey.
I was born in Russia, in a remote town in Eastern Siberia. My parents are geologists and from early age I spent all my summers in expeditions traveling and camping in remote places. I was left pretty much on my own in a camp and I spent a lot of time wondering alone in the wilderness. Nature was my home, not the city. The way you spend you childhood is imprinted in you for the rest of your life. As an adult I am destined to live in a city, but I never felt that it is my true home. This longing feeling for lost nature and open wide spaces has brought me to landscape photography and love for travel.
But I have not yet discovered photography until my family moved to the United States. We started to make long road trips from Chicago to Seattle and Los Angeles visiting all national parks on our way. I had a small cheap camera which I used to make hundred of pictures. But it was no more than the way to document our trips. And then in of the trips somewhere in Montana in old dusty photo store I bought a book on landscape photography. It changed my life. I realized that there is more to photography than snapshots. It is art. And I can do it.
In landscape photography it all clicked in perfectly for me: my love for nature and travel and a vivid sense of design and composition I always had. I immediately began my self-education in the craft of photography. I made a conscience decision early on to focus only on digital photography even though it was in its early phase. In the beginning I had to use a film camera and I made transparencies which I scanned with a film scanner. Photoshop became my digital darkroom. These days I enjoy using professional digital photo equipment which produces images on a par in quality with old film. I spend a lot of time and take great efforts in preparing each photograph to make high quality prints which I print myself.
One of the things I enjoy with photography is a learning process. Every day is a step up. Every day you learn something new. It is not only about craft and technical aspects of photography. Photography is, or can be, a way of life. Photography as any art is a tool of exploring yourself. And it is quite a journey.