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Photo&Video

Andrey Kamenev

Andrey Kamenev has no opponents among Russian photographers: he dived under ice on the North Pole, descended the sinkhole caves in Mexico, climbed the mountain wall in Switzerland-all in all, he seriously risked to make spectacular shots.



In fifteen years he travelled over seventy countries, crossed more than for million kulometers on different means of transport. In other words, he travelled around the world approximately 100 times.

Andrey speaking about creative impulses, birds and what should be lo

«Every creative impulse should come from inside, not from outside. If a person hanger a huge camera on his neck and looks like a fashionable photographer, it won’t make sense. I haven’t learned anywhere, I was concerned with birds. My dream was to invent an identifier of the USSR birds. First, I thought to do it with drawn pictures. But you could die drawing every feather! It is much easier to shoot a bird.

Soon I understood that it is almost impossible to shoot a bird using a standard camera. At those times, in the 70’s the choice was not big and I dreamed of a reflex camera to attach binoculars or a telescope to it and to get to birds closer. Then for a long time, from 1976 to 1988, I pictured nature, birds and everything. Ant then I quit my main job- I was fed up with sitting in a box. I was a test engineer and flew helicopters, not because I wanted to fly -I was late to enter VGIK and didn’t want to go to army. So, I entered the University of Cartography and p-Photo, because the word “photo” was in the name. There I was taught professional technical photography, so I know what none of the modern photographers knows.

Essentially, any professional reportage photographer can shoot anything. But I’m not sure that all of them will go down 400 meters on a rope to a Mexican cave or dive under ice on the North Pole. Or on Dombai you can walk to the middle of the route without skis, but you have to be there for 5–6 hours in minus 20 and shoot! Who would like to make such a photo session even for a thousand dollars for example? They will think- «What for? I’d better shoot football for the same money.» So, you have to love in anyway!”