Details of my boring life…
I was born between Europe and Asia. Iskitim, my hometown, lies covered in snow in the midst of cold Siberia. Anyone born there can’t help but dream about moving to the warm seaside. All my childhood friends became accountants, teachers, and economists never leaving the town. But I knew from the very beginning that I was destined for something greater.
I finished school at the top of the class (unfortunately, I wasn’t awarded Gold medal, because it was given to the son of some local hotshot) and went to St. Petersburg to apply to Electrotechnical University. But having met a very beautiful young woman in the Pobeda Park I decided to apply to St. Petersburg University of Aerospace Instrumentation (former Leningrad Instrumentation Technology Institute). What can I tell you… I was very smart, but could easily fall in love. To this day, nobody believes I was accepted to this university without bribery and referrals. But I did, and my girlfriend didn’t. I haven’t seen her since.
After that everything was like a flash: making through the first year of University, playing Otello in a student’s drama theater, having two or three affairs, learning Fortran 66…. And before I knew it I was drafted and sent to Byelorussian forest to guard SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missile. I learned how to sleep in freezing cold, how to run wearing NBC suit in high heat, and how to setup “Kaktus-D” radio-controlled minefield. When my commanding officer found out that I was into photography, he assigned me to make a regimental photo lab. And so, instead of keeping watch or sitting in a guardhouse, I spent the last year with a camera in my hands. But everything comes to an end, and so did this job. One summer I quit, taking home the knowledge about photography and chemical burns on my hands.
New adventures were waiting for me in the University. During this time I changed my major, volunteered in several student labor camps, where I carved wooden gnomes while my friends were loading concrete, managed our student drama school, played KVN, wrote dozens of poems, drew a lot of layouts. Usually, every new drawing meant a new love affair, which ended as soon the object of my passion turned in her paper. Also I visited Fann Mountains with members of a rock climbing club, performed at several student festivals (solo and with friends), learned a lot of programming languages and started a revolution to change educational program in my department. Revolution failed but the head of the department had kept his hopes up for 10 years waiting for me to enter his postgraduate program. And I have being photographing during all this time: using slides and film, taking photos of friends and landscapes day and night.
After graduation, instead of looking for a job I created one for myself: my friends and I started a software development company. Being a big adventurer by nature, I have always been drawn to most “hopeless” projects; so the next thing I decided to do was to open an online store.
Having explored Internet to my heart’s content I decided to return to my main passion – photography. So I opened a photo studio, making one of my childhood dreams come true. After that I decided to go for all my childhood dreams. Next in my list was visiting distant islands. In the warm seas, of course. To keep myself busy I learned scuba diving, which turned into a strong ocean addiction.
All I had to do to lose myself completely was to take my camera under water…