Nikola Stojak
@nikolastojak
Landscape photographer based in Switzerland
My name is Nikola, 28 years old and from origin Croatian though I was born in Switzerland, the Jura region, and studied in Neuchâtel. At my 18th, I bought my first reflex camera, a Canon 500D, with my very first salary. It is one my most favorite toys I have ever had, which made me flourish the most and with which I discovered different corners of Switzerland and abroad. After my studies, my passion for photography brought me closer to the center of Switzerland, the municipality of Fribourg, to be near to the Alps and still nearby many beautiful lakes and rivers.
"Living in this geographical position allows me to make little trips, doing what I love while having a minimum impact on nature when displacing myself to these natural gems."
I live in a paradise, surrounded my mountains, rivers and lowlands, so it would be a pity to stay home all the time. Being inside, I feel like an animal in a cage. Sometimes I leave this beautiful area which is home to travel a bit further away. Traveling to other places fulfills me with unforgettable moments that I won’t be able to live otherwise, these are unique moments that yield nothing but beautiful memories. With each trip I grow personally and professionally, I improve and become more creative as a result of seeing different cultures, landscapes and nature. I spend a lot of time outside both at home and when traveling and there’s no sunrise or sunset I miss. Photography allows me to make a connection with nature.
"A connection that I create when being out in nature and that I can rediscover with every image I look at afterwards."
"Photography also enables me to do what I wasn’t really capable of before..."
I don’t need words anymore to express myself, I don’t need to think about what and how to say what I have in my mind or how I feel… I just show it. I have always been a very active and a little disturbed kid I would say, and being in nature helped me to focus on the important things that life gives us and that we don’t want to lose. Photography is like an extension of me and of my way of seeing the world. It’s is not just about taking photos. It’s about perceiving things from different angles and applying it to different aspects and surroundings in life.
It brings me back to Earth, feeling in harmony with nature while respecting it. I find it hard to see the impact that human has on this marvellous planet without truly feeling our planet and being aware of its splendor. I can feel it and I am aware of it, thanks to photography. And it’s also thanks to photography that I can demonstrate to the rest of the world that there is something so much more beautiful than the materialistic things in life we seem to give importance to. I dream about showing to the world one day, all the marvel that surrounds us and that we have the duty to protect it.
"It’s exactly this marvel of my natural surroundings that provides me with inspiration."
It’s not a specific place that inspires me but more the present moment at a certain place, the lights, shadows and the colors a certain landscapes adopts when being highlighted by the sun. Often I go to a place that I like and I come back not just with a beautiful photo but also with a fulfilling day without having had a specific objective that I wanted to achieve. Most of the time I let me guide by the mountains and each and every time I am surprised by their magnitude, their beauty. I love taking my camera, arrange my things at the moment of departure and stop thinking as soon as I leave, just capturing the present moment and the wonderful colors that nature shows us. The Swiss micro climate gives me numerous sources of inspiration all year long; having four seasons with each its own natural beauty and charm motivates me every time again to go outdoors, observing the differences in light, colors and nature. To capture all this, of course your camera settings influence, the composition, the subject, etc., but it’s also important to live the moment and capture what you see and feel.
"If you’re all busy with the these technical aspects to take the perfect shot, it won’t be perfect. Because you missed the moment yourself."
"When talking about settings, compositions and techniques, I am not sticking to any kind of style in particular."
I am someone who can let go of routines very easily and that’s an advantage because I can find and apply new methods and compositions constantly, no matter the landscape. I like to stand out from the crowd doing something different and reinventing new things. The opportunities for doing this grew enormously by getting into drone photography. Although there’s a very restrictive level of laws when it comes to using drones, I can achieve fascinating shots that until now were only dreams. But dreams do come true sometimes and it allows me now to make an infinite variety of shots both on the ground and in the air, with a whole new perspective that I could not have imagined before.
"When I am home, I start editing the photos that I took whenever I can."
I am happy with the result if I managed to keep the landscape on the photo as natural as possible, that there is transparency and resemblance between my final product and the reality, still adding and conveying a touch of my personality. Sometimes it’s very complicated and frustrating to obtain a result that resembles the reality because as with everything in life, we have the tendency of making things more beautiful than they are already. That’s why I love to spend time on my computer on rainy days, to have time to edit my photos and to remember the magic moment between nature and me, with the aim of staying as close as possible to reality and enjoying the editing process with a smile.
"One of my favorite magic moments was a Summer in the Pre-Alps of Friborg, starting from Jaun."
When I discovered these mountains, they looked like the dolomites. I have been there.. it’s just incredible that such magnificent mountain range can be found a few dozen kilometers from us. Since then, I am constantly looking for new landscapes in Switzerland and abroad, which allows me to dream and live these dreams. I see myself living my passion for nature, spending almost all of my time outside and living unforgettable moments because I believe that life is too short to do something that we don’t love doing. Living is not just about food and water, but also about doing what we love with someone with whom we love doing it.
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