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Alen Tkalčec
@be_mesmerized
Best of the week 17 at #nomadict 2020
Since I was a little kid, I had an interest in making videos. Back then, my father owned a camera; it was an old VHS camcorder. He would make videos of my sister and me growing up. I remember I always wanted to shoot something too, but he would never let me use the camera. What I used to do then is sneak out and “borrow” the camera when he wouldn’t know. When I managed to save up some money and with the help from my parents, I bought my first camera. It was a compact camera I could also make videos with. My friends and I formed a group where we would create videos inspired by Jackass and I would edit them. Since I lived in a village, broadband internet wasn’t a thing so our way of getting the audience was recording the videos on CD’s and giving them to friends who were spreading them further. I guess that’s how it all started. Later on, I discovered Andrew Kramer, and that’s how I started learning.
During college, I had many student jobs and my first purchase was my first DSLR camera. The second purchase – plane tickets to London with my girlfriend. That was our first self-planned trip where we spent a full ten days exploring every corner of London. We would wake up early and come back to the hotel after dark, just exploring and taking photos all day long. I didn’t know much about photography and video back then, but I was learning every day and I also made a promise that I’ll try to save as much money as possible for other travels.
"I never thought I would make a living from doing videos. Since I came from a small village, success was considered finishing college and getting a job."
I think I felt that kind of pressure to do exactly that because that’s what the society expected from me. Where I came from making videos wasn’t considered a real job, more of a hobby and something you would do for fun. Despite that, my biggest support during the journey that was about to start at that point were my parents and my girlfriend. They have always encouraged me to do what I love and support every decision I made, and I’m very grateful for that.
After college, I got a job in a wedding studio. Having a 9-5 office job, editing weddings and during weekends shooting weddings until I saved up enough money to buy myself a new camera, lens, and a gimbal. Next, I booked a weekend trip to Rovinj, Croatia, to try to film the first video for my portfolio.
I went and did some events for free to build my portfolio and make connections, which could be potential clients later. A huge surprise was then an American journalist found my Rovinj video. Without even meeting me, she asked me to come with her to shoot a documentary in China. Without hesitation I said yes, and that was how I got my first big project. After I got home from China, she decided to continue working with me. One month later my Rovinj video won the 2nd place in the Zagreb Tour Film festival, and that’s when I decided to start my own company with a dream to travel the world and make videos and photos.
I tend to lean more to videography than photography. Editing videos seemed always a much more fun process for me than editing photos so photography was something I never explored that much until recently, when I decided I want to get better at it. On my last trip to Indonesia, I started practicing more editing techniques, playing with different tools, and I have to say I love it. I’m interested in landscape photography and in the future I want to focus more on it. Already while shooting I try to have my photo correctly exposed, and when editing I try not to overdo it. First I make the basic adjustment like crop, exposure, contrast… My favorite tab is HSL tab, where I can really make my image pop. After that, if needed, I get into photoshop to clean it up a bit – remove unwanted elements that take the attention away.
"For me, editing is the most fun part of photography. You can make your work stand out or create your signature style."
"It was on this trip to Indonesia that I took the winning shot, which I actually almost couldn’t get."
When my friends and I arrived at the national park, the next morning we would woke up at 3am to hike up the viewpoint to see Mt. Bromo and Semeru in the distance. The next morning when we got to the top of the hill, we couldn’t see anything because of the fog. We ended up waiting until 9 am, and the weather didn’t clear. Disappointed we went back, hoping to be more lucky the next day. We were not. Same story; fog, no view, and the day after we would have to leave so there was no other chance. That night we packed our stuff to be ready to leave the next morning and we decided to wake up early again just to see from outside of the accommodation how the weather would be and how the view from there would look like. When I woke up, I started yelling and jumping as the view cleared. We ran outside and I instantly launched my drone to get as many photos as possible.
"I was blown away by how the area looked like even just from outside the accommodation. It’s incredible what mother nature is capable of creating."
"Indonesia has a special place in my heart and it’s a country I’ll keep returning to."
It has incredible landscapes, waterfalls, volcanoes. It’s an incredible feeling standing on top of an active volcano watching the sunrise or hiking through the jungle, crossing rivers to get to an incredible waterfall. But the most amazing thing about Indonesia is its people. I never met such kind and generous people. Everyone will go over and beyond to help you and to make you feel welcome and comfortable. On my last visit there, we found our driver who would spend three days driving us to waterfalls and finishing our trip at Mt. Bromo. In the end, that guy stayed with us for seven days, traveling more than 500 km, showing us some of the most amazing places. I can say we’ve made a good friend on that trip.
Another great experience was living with a tribe in Kenya. In the middle of nowhere, in a place that doesn’t even exist on a map, a 6h drive through a desert to the nearest town. No electricity, shower, ‘proper’ food and no internet. It was an incredible experience to see how the nomadic tribe lives and just following them while they do their daily routine. I slept on a wooden bed in a hut made out of branches, hearing sounds of hyenas in the distance. It was an awesome experience to see how they live with so little but are humble and happy with what they have. We often live these “fast” and stressful lives, worrying about this and that, while they are much more relaxed, living in the moment and happy and grateful for what they have.
I was always inspired to travel and explore distant places by seeing the work of other photographers on social media or nature documentaries. I hope that I can inspire others to go out too; that has been my intention from the start.
As said, my first video about Rovinj got a lot of media attention in Croatia. From the reactions we got I noticed that many people didn’t even get a chance to see the places that are in their home country. Even one of our busiest highway routes goes through that place, but not many of them would stop there on the way to the coast. So, the idea was to start by exploring our own country making videos and photos that would inspire people to start traveling, even in their own country. My girlfriend proposed the idea to call our project ‘Mesmerized’ because the places we saw left us speechless because of their beauty.
"Webster dictionary defines the word “mesmerize” as: “to interest or amaze (someone) so much that nothing else is seen or noticed.” That’s how we felt. And that’s what we wanted to invoke in others. Be Mesmerized!"
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