“My goal is to show the beauty of wild nature in Russian nature reserves and national parks and awaken in people the desire to preserve these places.” “I wish to convey the beauty of wild nature in Russia's protected areas to people around the world and evoke in them the desire to conserve those areas." (Igor Shpilenok)

Igor Shpilenok was born on February 28, 1960, in the Trubchevsky district of the Bryansk region. He graduated from the Bryansk Pedagogical Institute, worked as a teacher in a school in the forest village of Novenkoe, then settled with his wife and two small sons in an abandoned forest cordon near the Nerussa River. He began to write (his favorite style of those years was letters to friends or diary entries).

I got serious about photographing animals and studied the behavior of “Red Book” black storks. With his active participation, the Bryansk Forest nature reserve was created, and Igor Shpilenok became the first director of this reserve.

Photographs wildlife (landscape photography) and wild animals. Author of photo books about wildlife. Member of the International League of Conservation Photographers.

In 2006 and 2009, Igor Shpilenok won the “Urban and Garden Wildlife” category of the BBC “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” competition. Winner of the “Golden Turtle” photo competition in the “Harmony of Life” category in 2006 for the photo “Dawn on the Kronotskaya River”

He says about himself: “The idea to start taking photographs came to me at the age of 13, when, in my wanderings through the spring Bryansk forest, I discovered an amazing clearing with hundreds of snowdrops. It seemed unfair to me that only I, out of several billion people living on earth, see this beauty.

...For two weeks I tried to persuade my grandmother to buy me a camera, but when I returned to the clearing with a brand new camera, I realized that I was too late. Tall summer grass grew in place of the flowers. For a whole year I waited for the next spring and studied photography techniques, spending on it all the material resources available to me. On April 25, 1974, I returned to the clearing and couldn’t believe my eyes. In place of clumps of snowdrops, the soil turned over by tractor tracks turned black, and stacks of freshly cut wood were piled up...

...This was one of the most powerful shocks of adolescence that determined my future life. Since then, the camera has been my strongest ally in the work to save the Bryansk Forest - the place where I was born, live and hope to die. With the help of photography (by publishing articles in newspapers and magazines, organizing photo exhibitions), I found allies, with whom I achieved the organization of the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve and became its first director, working in this position for ten years...

...During this time, my colleagues and I managed to create 12 more protected natural areas in the Bryansk Forest, where logging, land reclamation and other destructive types of economic activity are prohibited. Now almost 20 percent of the Bryansk Forest has been withdrawn from economic use, and its central part has been declared an international biosphere reserve under the auspices of UNESCO. Years have healed the wounds inflicted by people on the Bryansk Forest, and hundreds of snowdrops are blooming in my clearing again—nothing threatens them now.

In the second half of my life, when I was pretty tired of the bureaucratic side of management work, I decided to devote myself entirely to photography. Now I have a dream job: to bring to people the beauty of wild nature, to awaken them to environmental initiatives, while being in the thick of environmental events myself. I dreamed that the geography of my photo expeditions would expand to the entire protected Russia.

And so it was until I discovered the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka and fell in love with this harsh land. Now I have a second homeland, and I am torn between the Bryansk Forest and Kamchatka, between which a country the size of nine time zones fits!

I am the happy father of four sons: Tikhon, Peter, Andrey and Makar. Tikhon and Petya continue the work of my life with their routes. The two youngest are still dreaming about it. I'm a happy husband. My wife Laura and I are united not only by love, but also by common life values. She was born and raised in the USA, but lives in Russia eleven months a year.

Like me, she has been involved in nature conservation all her adult life. In addition, she manages to write her books and translate mine. I owe all my victories at international and Russian photo competitions to Laura: she is the one who selects and sends the pictures.”

Igor Shpilenok currently lives in the village of Chukhrai, which is located in the Bryansk Forest nature reserve, sometimes leaving his native places, which he talks about in his blog on LiveJournal, about the places where he is located. and also talks in detail about the nature of the animals he photographs. In 2012, Igor’s blog received the “Rynda of the Year” award in the “Image of the Year” category.

The photo history of Igor Shpilenok began in adolescence with, surprisingly, a burning resentment towards the surrounding injustice. In 1973, when he was 13 years old, in the forest in his native Bryansk region, he saw a field of snowdrops that struck him with its beauty. And Igor wanted to show this unearthly beauty to other people so much that he begged his grandmother for a camera for two weeks. And when he returned to his original place, he was saddened to see only summer grass.

I had to wait a whole year. And so, when the next spring, with a sinking heart, he came to the same place, he was dumbfounded.

Instead of the familiar landscape and such long-awaited snowdrops, fresh traces of a caterpillar tractor ran across the entire clearing, and felled trees lay around. The emotions he experienced then predetermined his entire future life.

Now Igor is one of the best Russian animal photographers and a popularizer of the idea of ​​wildlife conservation, actively involved in the creation and functioning of nature reserves.

The first, back in 1987, was Bryansk Forest, then there were others. Today Igor is torn between his beloved Bryansk forests and the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka, where the ecosystem has been preserved almost in its original state, and animals do not at all consider humans the king of nature.

His photographs are amazing. This is a contact with a completely different world, where there is not a single supermarket for hundreds of kilometers around.

In his photographs, animals, as a rule, live their lives. Hunting, mating games, training the young - all this happens in front of Igor’s lens.

How does he manage to achieve such a degree of involvement in the ordinary life of wild animals?

It’s simple: you need to become a familiar and safe element of the world around them.

He himself talks about it this way: “Once I spent five months in a hut on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. Settled in in October.

For two weeks I saw animals only at a great distance. Local foxes and bears were the first to stop being afraid of me, then wolverines and sables. It became possible to film their interactions with each other.”

But, of course, to photograph the most cautious animals you have to use carefully prepared concealments and long-focus lenses.

By the way, Igor has exclusively preferred Nikon for many years and has even infected his entire family with this preference, right down to his young sons, who are actively following in their father’s footsteps.

The main thing for Igor is not just to take a beautiful shot that will make hereditary townspeople groan at the exhibition.

“Photography for me is not an end in itself. First of all, it is a powerful tool in the main cause of my life - wildlife conservation. It’s wild, which is why the main and only theme of my work is Russian specially protected natural areas: nature reserves, national parks, sanctuaries.”

But still, Igor Shpilenok’s photographs are professionally and soulfully taken photographs that can not only arouse the momentary interest of a bored viewer, but touch the soul.

After all, in each of us, albeit somewhere very deep, sits a primitive man, with his reverence for wild nature. And sometimes he still raises his voice.

The history of Igor Shpilenok's passion for photography, an animal photographer, founder of the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve, is special. It looks like a fairy tale, which is used to lull children to sleep in wonderful dreams... Children's genuine emotion served as the foundation for a constant desire to record and protect the immaculate, inexhaustible beauties of nature. Through constant interaction with nature, develop yourself, your body, feelings, mind, consciousness and soul.

- Igor, tell this story...

- We all come from childhood... The idea to start photographing nature came to me at the age of 13, when in my wanderings through the spring Bryansk forest I discovered an amazing clearing with hundreds of snowdrops. It seemed unfair to me that only I, out of several billion people living on earth, see this beauty. For two weeks I tried to persuade my grandmother to buy me a camera, but when I returned to the clearing with the brand new Smena-8M, I realized that I was too late. Tall summer grass grew in place of the flowers. For a whole year I waited for the next spring and at the same time studied photography, spending all the material resources available to me on it. On April 25, 1974, I returned to the clearing and couldn’t believe my eyes. In place of clumps of snowdrops, the soil turned over by tractor tracks turned black, and stacks of freshly cut wood were piled up. This was one of the most powerful shocks of adolescence that determined my future life. Since then, the camera has been my strongest and most faithful ally in the fight to save the Bryansk Forest - the place where I was born, live and hope to die.

- Now photography is not only a hobby, but also a tool of influence?

- With the help of photography (by publishing articles in newspapers and magazines, organizing photo exhibitions), I found allies, with whom I achieved the organization of the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve and on September 1, 1987, I became its first director, working in this position for ten years. During this time, my colleagues and I managed to create 12 more protected natural areas in the Bryansk Forest, where logging, land reclamation and other destructive types of economic activity are prohibited. Now almost 20 percent of the Bryansk forest has been withdrawn from economic use. Years have healed the wounds inflicted by people on the Bryansk Forest, and hundreds of snowdrops are blooming in my clearing again - now they are not in danger.
Later, I felt that I could leave the bureaucratic side of my work, and resigned as director of the reserve to take up photography professionally. Now my priorities are to bring to people the beauty of wild nature, to awaken them to environmental initiatives, while being in the thick of environmental events myself. And the geography of my current photo expeditions has expanded to the entire protected Russia.

When I found out that you live in a nature reserve, to be honest, I was envious. I don’t know a single person who can boast of such a registration. Tell us about the features of such habitat.
- In modern Russia, 75 percent of the population are city dwellers. It’s a shame, but most of them live in a parallel world with wild nature. And the lives of many people, especially busy people involved in politics and making money, have almost no contact with wild nature. Or it comes into contact in an ugly form, for example, in the form of helicopter hunts... Most residents of giant cities simply do not have experience communicating with untouched nature. Meanwhile, all the key decisions on environmental management, on the transformation of wild nature: where and how much to cut down forests, where to block rivers; where to pump oil; where the creation of nature reserves and national parks are being prepared and accepted in megacities. Most often, this is done by people who have no idea what wild nature is and who have no personal experience of communicating with it. True nature photography aims to be a bridge between the modern urban world and wild nature.

- I know that the Bryansk Forest is not the only nature reserve that you have chosen as your home.
- Actually, I’m currently on winter leave in the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve, and I work in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka as an inspector for the protection of the reserve. The family is with me now. But when I’m in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, the family lives in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In the Kronotsky Nature Reserve itself, the conditions are too harsh and dangerous for small children.
I went to Kamchatka for two weeks to photograph the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, but for the fifth year now I can’t bring myself to return to my native Bryansk Forest. And my family has already moved here, and in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve I am no longer a visiting photographer, but a nature conservation inspector. What doesn’t let me go to a heated and equipped house in the Bryansk Forest? Here, in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, I found myself in the pristine past of humanity, in the past for which we all yearn. Man has managed to destroy little here. Here I am surrounded by dramatic landscapes, unspoiled by electric lines and highways.
Animals here sometimes do not know that man is the king of nature and do not give way to the path, and there may be so many fish going to spawn that it is impossible to swim in the stream. Sometimes you have to live for weeks, or even months, in the most inaccessible places. And you see what is not given to others, you see what will never happen again. For example, in the spring of 2007, I came to the Valley of Geysers to film a topic about bears on volcanoes, and I had to become a chronicler of the dramatic change in the landscape of the reserve, when on June 3, the largest mudflow in historical time in Kamchatka occurred and half of the Russian geysers disappeared overnight. The giant stones stopped just half a meter from the houses where the people were.

- How did you feel when you saw with your own eyes the rarest excitement of nature?
- The stone and mud flow carried away all living things for two kilometers. When you see that the river bank, where you recently spent many dozens of happy hours with a camera on a tripod waiting for the geysers to erupt, is buried under a fifty-meter layer of stones and hot clay, you understand well the fragility of human life! Now June 3rd is the second birthday for me and my colleagues. But more than 20 large and medium-sized geysers remained only in photographs, and I had to be the last one to take them.

An incredibly dramatic story, but your photographs are more likely not from a chronicler photographer, but from an illustrator of children's fairy tales. Why do you photograph only nature and its inhabitants, and if a person appears in the frame, then he is certainly related to the listed characters?
Photography is not an end in itself for me. First of all, it is a powerful tool in the main cause of my life - wildlife conservation. It is wild, which is why the main and only theme of my work is Russian specially protected natural areas: nature reserves, national parks, sanctuaries.
There are 101 state reserves, 40 national parks and thousands of wildlife sanctuaries in Russia. I am closely integrated into this life, worked in all positions from the director of the reserve to an ordinary nature conservation inspector, and spent more than half of my life directly in the wild. Therefore, a person gets into my frame when he comes into contact with pristine nature, for example, if he works to preserve a reserve or save rare species of animals or plants. It could also be a poacher or a tourist. And outside of this context, I only photograph family and friends for a home album.

- At what moments is nature especially grateful to the lens?
- I observe the most interesting moments at the boundaries of the states of nature. At the junction of night and morning. At the change of season. When the weather changes.
For example, twilight, morning or evening, is my favorite time of day. This is not only a wonderful light, it is the time of greatest animal activity.
It used to be difficult to shoot at dusk. After the appearance of Nikon D3, it was like a new stage in my creativity. This camera produces excellent images at extreme sensitivity levels. In combination with my two favorite fast lenses, the AF-S NIKKOR 50mm 1:1.4G and AF-S NIKKOR 300mm 1:2.8G ED, I can take pictures that were completely impossible before.

- By the way, do you have any technical or other tricks to give character to a photograph?
- There is only one secret - to spend as much time as possible next to the subject of photography, to know as much as possible about them - then you manage to see more than others.
Endure separation from family, bad weather, and sometimes hunger. This is only possible when you have emotions, an attitude towards what you are filming, when you are motivated.

People preen themselves before being photographed and generally act as if a loved one is looking at them. Have you tried to film mating seasons in animals? How much of their coquetry does the photograph convey?
- The mating season in nature is the peak of life! Flowers in plants, mating games of animals. Nature does not skimp on reproduction and you can capture the most emotional moments. I photographed the love games of storks, cranes, waders, foxes, bears and was always surprised how similar they are to people in their manifestations of passion!

- I know that you have come up with your own know-how for photographing animals.
- I don’t go to filming for one or two days. My approach is to live in a forest cabin (or tent) for several weeks, and sometimes months. Become part of the landscape. I lived in the Bryansk Forest on a forest cordon for 10 years, and now I live in the abandoned village of Chukhrai, where, besides my family, there are 6 residents left. During the first days, all living things run away from the stranger. Gradually the animals stop being afraid of you. I once spent five months in a hut on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. Settled in in October. For the first two weeks I saw animals only at a great distance. Local foxes and bears were the first to stop being afraid of me, then wolverines and sables. There were opportunities to film their interactions with each other.

In the mornings I would often fry bacon and eggs or bake pancakes. This smell was narcotic for all the foxes in the area. They came close to the snow-covered kitchen window and lustfully inhaled the fragrant streams. There were fights over the right to stand at the window and smell. You could shoot directly from the window.
But many animal species do not trust humans. Such people have to be removed from stealth. This is a special topic.

- What is her special character?
- For many thousands of years, the human hunter has been pursuing wild animals in order to take their lives. And now the fear of four-legged people of two-legged people lives on an instinctive level. Animals in which the instinct of fear did not develop disappeared from the face of the planet.
Any photographer starting to photograph wild animals faces many difficulties and disappointments. Any hare, duck or sandpiper tries not to let a person get closer than the distance of a gun shot, that is, 70 - 100 meters. The animals appear too small in the photo, most often running away in mortal fear.

To photograph the same duck or hare in full frame, even with a long lens, you need to be three to five meters away from it. Unreal? If it were not real, there would not be many wonderful photographs showing the most intimate moments in the lives of animals. A well-designed hide is what can help you get closer to wary animals and birds at any distance.

- What could serve as such a hiding place?
- Anything that can hide a person’s figure and its movements can serve as a concealment: a small tent, a hut, a hole, a large hollow, a blockage of trees, even a pile of brushwood - it all depends on the specific situation.
Skradok can be made from any local material familiar to animals: straw, hay, grass, branches, old boards. An excellent hiding place can be a hole dug in hard ground and lined around the perimeter with a turf parapet and covered on top with any available material: boards, tarpaulins, branches. In winter, in places with a lot of snow, it is good to build snow shelters, like an Eskimo igloo. Sometimes it is enough to dig a hole in deep snow and cover it with an arch of snow plates. From such shelters I photographed Steller's sea eagles and swans, foxes and wolverines in Kamchatka. This is my favorite type of stealth. Snow bricks and plates have excellent heat and sound insulation. I had to make hides from ice cut with a chainsaw (for shooting otters), but they are not as convenient as from snow.

If you show your imagination, you can turn many familiar things into hidden items. For example, a car. Animals quickly get used to a stationary car. Several years ago I equipped a comfortable hide on wheels - a military van based on the GAZ-66 all-terrain vehicle. From this hide I filmed the fishing of black storks in the Bryansk region, bison and deer in the Oryol Polesie national park, wary saigas and demoiselle cranes and birds of prey in steppes of Kalmykia. There was even a refrigerator in this hideaway, where a fair supply of beer and more was stored.

Even my big house in the Bryansk village of Chukhrai is hidden. Several years ago, I dragged a gnarled oak tree trunk from the cutting area, dug it next to the house and installed a nesting platform for white storks on it. Beautiful birds built a large nest on it. Now I can shoot birds at very close range from the attic of my house without disturbing them in any way.
But the best-quality hide will remain useless if you don’t have the patience to sit in it motionless for long hours, sometimes for days.

- I think the equipment is also part of your secrets.
- With the equipment, I went through the typical path of people of my generation: Smena-8M, Zenit-E. During my student years, I managed to buy a Photosniper - who remembers - with a 300mm Tair-3 lens. In the early eighties, I worked as a forester with a salary of 75 rubles, and in order to buy my first Nikon, I had to start breeding bulls. Currently I have Nikon D3 and Nikon D300 in my arsenal. I've never had as much freedom as I do with these cameras that can handle the lifestyle I lead. They bear marks not only from abrasions, falls, but even from bites from curious bear cubs.

The history of Igor Shpilenok’s passion for photography, an animal photographer, founder of the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve, is special. It is like a fairy tale, which is used to lull children to sleep in wonderful dreams... Children's genuine emotion served as the foundation for a constant desire to record and protect the immaculate, inexhaustible beauties of nature. Through constant interaction with nature, develop yourself, your body, feelings, mind, consciousness and soul.

- Igor, tell me this story...

— We all come from childhood... The idea to start photographing nature came to me at the age of 13, when, in my wanderings through the spring Bryansk forest, I discovered an amazing clearing with hundreds of snowdrops. It seemed unfair to me that only I, out of several billion people living on earth, see this beauty. For two weeks I tried to persuade my grandmother to buy me a camera, but when I returned to the clearing with the brand new Smena-8M, I realized that I was too late. Tall summer grass grew in place of the flowers. For a whole year I waited for the next spring and at the same time studied photography, spending all the material resources available to me on it. On April 25, 1974, I returned to the clearing and couldn’t believe my eyes. In place of clumps of snowdrops, the soil turned over by tractor tracks turned black, and stacks of freshly cut wood were piled up. This was one of the most powerful shocks of adolescence that determined my future life. Since then, the camera has been my strongest and most faithful ally in the fight to save the Bryansk Forest - the place where I was born, live and hope to die.

— Now photography is not only a hobby, but also a tool of influence?

— With the help of photography (by publishing articles in newspapers and magazines, organizing photo exhibitions), I found allies, with whom I achieved the organization of the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve and on September 1, 1987, I became its first director, working in this position for ten years. During this time, my colleagues and I managed to create 12 more protected natural areas in the Bryansk Forest, where logging, land reclamation and other destructive types of economic activity are prohibited. Now almost 20 percent of the Bryansk forest has been withdrawn from economic use. Years have healed the wounds inflicted by people on the Bryansk Forest, and hundreds of snowdrops are blooming in my clearing again—nothing threatens them now.

Later, I felt that I could leave the bureaucratic side of my work, and resigned as director of the reserve to take up photography professionally. Now my priorities are to bring to people the beauty of wild nature, to awaken them to environmental initiatives, while being in the thick of environmental events myself. And the geography of my current photo expeditions has expanded to the entire protected Russia.

— When I found out that you live in a reserve, to be honest, I was envious. I don’t know a single person who can boast of such a registration. Tell us about the features of such habitat.

— In modern Russia, 75 percent of the population are city dwellers. It’s a shame, but most of them live in a parallel world with wild nature. And the lives of many people, especially busy people involved in politics and making money, have almost no contact with wild nature. Or it comes into contact in an ugly form, for example, in the form of helicopter hunts... Most residents of giant cities simply do not have experience communicating with untouched nature. Meanwhile, all the key decisions on environmental management, on the transformation of wild nature: where and how much to cut down forests, where to block rivers; where to pump oil; where the creation of nature reserves and national parks are being prepared and accepted in megacities. Most often, this is done by people who have no idea what wild nature is and who have no personal experience of communicating with it. True nature photography aims to be a bridge between the modern urban world and wild nature.

— I know that the Bryansk Forest is not the only nature reserve that you have chosen as your home.

— Actually, I’m currently on winter leave in the Bryansk Forest Nature Reserve, and I work in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka as an inspector for the protection of the reserve. The family is with me now. But when I’m in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, the family lives in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In the Kronotsky Nature Reserve itself, the conditions are too harsh and dangerous for small children.

I went to Kamchatka for two weeks to photograph the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, but for the fifth year now I can’t bring myself to return to my native Bryansk Forest. And my family has already moved here, and in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve I am no longer a visiting photographer, but a nature conservation inspector. What doesn’t let me go to a heated and equipped house in the Bryansk Forest? Here, in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, I found myself in the pristine past of humanity, in the past for which we all yearn. Man has managed to destroy little here. Here I am surrounded by dramatic landscapes, unspoiled by electric lines and highways.

Animals here sometimes do not know that man is the king of nature and do not give way to the path, and there may be so many fish going to spawn that it is impossible to swim in the stream. Sometimes you have to live for weeks, or even months, in the most inaccessible places. And you see what is not given to others, you see what will never happen again. For example, in the spring of 2007, I came to the Valley of Geysers to film a topic about bears on volcanoes, and I had to become a chronicler of the dramatic change in the landscape of the reserve, when on June 3, the largest mudflow in historical time in Kamchatka occurred and half of the Russian geysers disappeared overnight. The giant stones stopped just half a meter from the houses where the people were.

— How did you feel when you saw with your own eyes the rarest disturbance of nature?

— The stone and mud flow carried away all living things for two kilometers. When you see that the river bank, where you recently spent many dozens of happy hours with a camera on a tripod waiting for the geysers to erupt, is buried under a fifty-meter layer of stones and hot clay, you understand well the fragility of human life! Now June 3rd is the second birthday for me and my colleagues. But more than 20 large and medium-sized geysers remained only in photographs, and I had to be the last one to take them.

— An incredibly dramatic story, but your photographs are more likely not from a chronicler photographer, but from an illustrator of children’s fairy tales. Why do you photograph only nature and its inhabitants, and if a person appears in the frame, then he is certainly related to the listed characters?

Photography is not an end in itself for me. First of all, it is a powerful tool in the main cause of my life - wildlife conservation. It is wild, which is why the main and only theme of my work is Russian specially protected natural areas: nature reserves, national parks, sanctuaries.

There are 101 state reserves, 40 national parks and thousands of wildlife sanctuaries in Russia. I am closely integrated into this life, worked in all positions from the director of the reserve to an ordinary nature conservation inspector, and spent more than half of my life directly in the wild. Therefore, a person gets into my frame when he comes into contact with pristine nature, for example, if he works to preserve a reserve or save rare species of animals or plants. It could also be a poacher or a tourist. And outside of this context, I only photograph family and friends for a home album.

— At what moments is nature especially grateful to the lens?

— I observe the most interesting moments at the boundaries of the states of nature. At the junction of night and morning. At the change of season. When the weather changes.

For example, twilight, morning or evening, is my favorite time of day. This is not only a wonderful light, it is the time of greatest animal activity.

It used to be difficult to shoot at dusk. After the appearance Nikon D3 It’s like a new stage in creativity has arrived for me. This camera produces excellent images at extreme sensitivity levels. In combination with my two favorite fast lenses, the AF-S NIKKOR 50mm 1:1.4G and AF-S NIKKOR 300mm 1:2.8G ED, I can take pictures that were completely impossible before.

— By the way, do you have any technical or other tricks to give character to a photograph?

- There is only one secret - to spend as much time as possible next to the subject of photography, to know as much as possible about them - then you manage to see more than others.

Endure separation from family, bad weather, and sometimes hunger. This is only possible when you have emotions, an attitude towards what you are filming, when you are motivated.

“People preen themselves before filming and generally behave as if a loved one is looking at them. Have you tried to film mating seasons in animals? How much of their coquetry does the photograph convey?

— The mating season in nature is the peak of life! Flowers in plants, mating games of animals. Nature does not skimp on reproduction and you can capture the most emotional moments. I photographed the love games of storks, cranes, waders, foxes, bears and was always surprised how similar they are to people in their manifestations of passion!

— I know that you came up with your own know-how for photographing animals.

— I don’t go to filming for one or two days. My approach is to live in a forest cabin (or tent) for several weeks, and sometimes months. Become part of the landscape. I lived in the Bryansk Forest on a forest cordon for 10 years, and now I live in the abandoned village of Chukhrai, where, besides my family, there are 6 residents left. During the first days, all living things run away from the stranger. Gradually the animals stop being afraid of you. I once spent five months in a hut on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. Settled in in October. For the first two weeks I saw animals only at a great distance. Local foxes and bears were the first to stop being afraid of me, then wolverines and sables. There were opportunities to film their interactions with each other.

In the mornings I would often fry bacon and eggs or bake pancakes. This smell was narcotic for all the foxes in the area. They came close to the snow-covered kitchen window and lustfully inhaled the fragrant streams. There were fights over the right to stand at the window and smell. You could shoot directly from the window.

But many animal species do not trust humans. Such people have to be removed from stealth. This is a special topic.

—What is her special character?

— For many thousands of years, the human hunter has been pursuing wild animals in order to take their lives. And now the fear of four-legged people of two-legged people lives on an instinctive level. Animals in which the instinct of fear did not develop disappeared from the face of the planet.

Any photographer starting to photograph wild animals faces many difficulties and disappointments. Any hare, duck or sandpiper tries not to let a person get closer than a rifle shot, that is, 70 - 100 meters. The animals appear too small in the photo, most often running away in mortal fear.

To photograph the same duck or hare in full frame, even with a long lens, you need to be three to five meters away from it. Unreal? If it were not real, there would not be many wonderful photographs showing the most intimate moments in the lives of animals. A well-designed hide is what can help you get closer to wary animals and birds at any distance.

- What could serve as such a hiding place?

“Anything that can hide a person’s figure and its movements can serve as a concealment: a small tent, a hut, a hole, a large hollow, a blockage of trees, even a pile of brushwood - it all depends on the specific situation.

Skradok can be made from any local material familiar to animals: straw, hay, grass, branches, old boards. An excellent hiding place can be a hole dug in hard ground and lined around the perimeter with a turf parapet and covered on top with any available material: boards, tarpaulins, branches. In winter, in places with a lot of snow, it is good to build snow shelters, like an Eskimo igloo. Sometimes it is enough to dig a hole in deep snow and cover it with an arch of snow plates. From such shelters I photographed Steller's sea eagles and swans, foxes and wolverines in Kamchatka. This is my favorite type of stealth. Snow bricks and plates have excellent heat and sound insulation. I had to make hides from ice cut with a chainsaw (for shooting otters), but they are not as convenient as from snow.

If you show your imagination, you can turn many familiar things into hidden items. For example, a car. Animals quickly get used to a stationary car. Several years ago I equipped a comfortable hide on wheels - a military van based on a GAZ-66 all-terrain vehicle. From this hide I filmed the fishing of black storks in the Bryansk region, bison and deer in the Oryol Polesie national park, wary saigas and demoiselle cranes and birds of prey in steppes of Kalmykia. There was even a refrigerator in this hideaway, where a fair supply of beer and more was stored.

Even my big house in the Bryansk village of Chukhrai is hidden. Several years ago, I dragged a gnarled oak tree trunk from the cutting area, dug it next to the house and installed a nesting platform for white storks on it. Beautiful birds built a large nest on it. Now I can shoot birds at very close range from the attic of my house without disturbing them in any way.

But the best-quality hide will remain useless if you don’t have the patience to sit in it motionless for long hours, sometimes for days.

— I think the equipment is also part of your secrets.

— With the equipment, I went through the typical path of people of my generation: Smena-8M, Zenit-E. During my student years, I managed to buy a Photosniper - who remembers - with a 300mm Tair-3 lens. In the early eighties, I worked as a forester with a salary of 75 rubles, and in order to buy my first Nikon, I had to start breeding bulls. Now in my arsenal Nikon D3 And Nikon D300. I've never had as much freedom as I do with these cameras that can handle the lifestyle I lead. They bear marks not only from abrasions, falls, but even from bites from curious bear cubs.

Modern professional Nikon equipment, like no other, allows me to work for a long time alone in places remote from civilization. Amazing strength and moisture protection! Cameras and lenses have fallen off horses, bounced off-road in all-terrain vehicles, and ended up in car accidents. In crowded helicopters, sometimes people sit on my soft cases with equipment. To whom
I had to sail across large bodies of water on a motorboat; they know what vibrations and shocks there are in a boat when it travels along a wave at high speed. More than once I witnessed how my colleagues’ cameras came loose from this vibration. I have never seen this problem with Nikon. I spent several seasons in the Valley of Geysers and saw many cases where cameras stopped working in hot steam after geyser eruptions. But not Nikons.

A book is the best gift. A book with the author's autograph or with wishes from the author is an exclusive gift!
I have the opportunity to send by mail any of the 4 books that I have published in the last few years, as well as the “Carpets of My Homeland” calendar for 2016. If you wish, any book will be signed.
For example, these:

To make it easier for myself to sell books and calendars now and in the future, I created an online store, literally on my knees. So don't be upset by the little bumps when you visit. I'm also that internet builder. I do better with bricks and logs :)

If you would like me to autograph or sign books or a calendar, when placing your order in the cart, click the "Add message to seller" button and let me know who to sign, as well as your wishes for the signature.

February 19th, 2014

Russian only

Orlik and I in our youth. Orlik and I in our youth. Photo Igor Shpilenok.

I have loved horses since childhood. As a little girl, I collected horse figurines and re-read all the children's literature about horses. My family - mother, stepfather, brother and I - lived in the city of Denver, where even with our rather large plot of land it was impossible to keep horses. And my father lived with his stepmother in the country, 30 minutes from Denver. When I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a pony - a piebald filly named Mandy. I rode it across the prairies at the foot of the Rocky Mountains every weekend and all summer until I outgrew the short Mandy. Then my dad bought me a horse named Bree, a nightingale color, an American quarter-mile breed (the first breed of horse bred in the United States). I began to participate in competitions and equestrian competitions, performing complex maneuvers that were used in the wild west for driving cattle.

When I went to boarding school in tenth grade, we had to sell Bree, but at school I participated in a riding club. And only 12 years later I had my own horse again - here in the Bryansk region. ()