For the first time I took a photo camera in my hands at the age of five. It was a gift from my grandfather. I think, that was the moment that determined a lot in my future.

At the beginning, the very process of shooting, developing and printing photos was my major interest—it looked a kind of a mystery to me. Then the picture itself came to the foreground. I was trying to embody the story that was covering behind and was enjoying these efforts for quite a long time. I was learning, searching, experimenting, taking delight in successful shots, but at the same time, I was feeling a lack of something I couldn’t yet name.

What I lacked I realized when being in the Crimea at the age of fourteen. By some chance a video camera fell into my hands. It was small and a pretty primitive, but as soon as I looked at the world through its lens, an answer immediately formed in my mind. I precisely understood that the thing I lacked in photography was dynamics. I wanted not only to catch a moment, but to show its development, to show an emotion in motion—its beginning, its culmination… something that photography wasn’t able to give me. Then and there I clearly understood what I wanted to do, and afterwards, though not all at once, filming became my profession.

It happened in 2005. I already had an experience of amateur video shooting, I was learning, nurturing my skills and proficiency. But in that particular year I felt ready to start working as a professional and earn my living with a camera. By that time I had at my disposal high-quality equipment, and I increased the toolkit in due course time. Today, I have all the equipment—modern and quality—necessary for my work.

My niche is wedding video. Though I create ad videos and promo videos for music bands, weddings compose the major part of my work.

Why? I’ve already spoken about emotions… So, making wedding movies attracts me with the opportunity to deal and work with emotions. Indeed, a wedding is one of the most important days in a couple’s life, one of the most heart-pounding and thrilling. I want to live this day together with a bride and a groom and preserve for them those bright emotions and feelings that accompany such a day.

What gives me the most pleasure and satisfaction out of my work is catching truly successful moments, when people totally relax and become themselves, become real. When I manage to make them forget about my presence and stop worrying about the lens pointed at them, I get the most perfect images able to “catch” people who might accidentally watch the video. For the sake of capturing the reality and true emotions, I’m ready to follow my heroes, often staying out of view, being devious, and cunningly foist to them kites, soap bubbles or chess…

I hate the dominance of posed scenes. There should be an idea, of course, but I am for the most natural course of events comfortable for the couple.

What do I want? I obviously want my clients to be satisfied with my work, I want my work to bring them joy and awaken pleasant memories. But I also want my works to catch an eye of absolute strangers, people that are out of the events, and make them being glad for my heroes and share their happiness. And that’s when I’m absolutely content.