I had my first camera in 2007, when I was still in college. It was a compact Sony. It was also about that time that I really got into Photoshop. Then, a year later, Illustrator. In fact, I was slowly moving towards the art of photo manipulation and vector drawing, while still practicing with my camera from time to time.
In December 2012, however, I bought my first DSLR camera, which was a Nikon 7000. Then it all started to come into place. I got out and started shooting. I didn’t want to, though, as I wasn’t confident enough or I was feeling like I don’t have the skills yet to use my brand new and all-too-advanced camera. Luckily, my friends saw something in me and pushed me to take small steps.
As I was very passionate about birds since I was little, it only came natural to start photographing them. I used to wake up at 5 a.m. and go to a park nearby where I was spending the first half of the day, each weekend. Sometimes, I even went in the evenings – although, that didn’t prove to be very productive, as a lot of people were present, relaxing after their workday or walking their dog. It was very difficult to get a good shot in these conditions, but it was also fun, exciting and motivating.
Looking for small birds in the trees or in the bushes, I also started to notice the little things: the grass, the flowers, the butterflies, the bees. It’s this how I decided I wanted a macro lens and try to capture all these micro universes that were right there, in front of me, in front of all of us, passing unnoticed most of the times. I used to get overwhelmed very often thinking about how small their world is and how many worlds like that exist in the world that we’re living in. And maybe how many worlds like our own build someone else’s incredibly vast world?
In 2014, I stepped up from the consumer cameras and got a pro-level Nikon D810. Somehow I felt like I needed a change, something more, but not giving up avian and macro photography. So I went for fitness and physique photography. It was very soon that I realized I really wanted to get better at it and learn everything I could about photographing the human body, about studio and natural light, about composition and posing. It often felt like the time is too short, like there is too much to learn, too much to experiment.
And there is. The only thing I now know for sure is that I will always feel excited with a camera in my hand.
Cristian