Ross Mastrovich
@rossmastrovich
Photographer and Visual Artist
Memories from my childhood are dominated by the outdoors. I grew up in a tiny rural village in New Zealand at the foot of three active volcanoes so early on I developed a love for exploring the wilderness. When one of the volcanoes, Mt. Ruapehu, erupted in late 1995 I could see it from my bedroom window so when I saw photographs of the same scene in the newspaper it was my first introduction to the role of landscape photography.
"When I bought my first camera, 15 years later, these volcanoes were of course my first subjects."
In 2013 I was in a kind of funk. I had all sorts of grand ideas and aspirations to be a filmmaker but would never actually put in the work – always dreaming, never doing. I stumbled across a website detailing all the countries I could get a working holiday visa for and the list was huge. Once the idea that I could work my way around the world got in to in my head, it was inevitable that I would do it. I think I picked Canada as my first stop because it was about as far away as possible, and of course once there, I headed straight to the mountains.
"I still had my first camera with me and that’s where my travel photography journey really started."
These days I work mostly as a chef, doing freelance photography on the side. I got into cooking mostly as a way to travel the world and gain access to new places to explore and photograph but now I really enjoy juggling the two professions. Photography takes up all my spare time and if I don’t have my camera in hand I’m usually on my laptop editing photos. Every time I travel to a new destination, whether it’s to live and work or just visiting, I’m always looking for photo opportunities.
"Any moment I have I will hunt on Google maps or just take a drive to any lake, mountain etc. that I can find and go explore."
When starting out in travel photography I found myself becoming obsessed with getting new lenses and upgrading my camera. With every camera company bringing out new models every year it can seem like you need to constantly upgrade to keep up with other photographers. Sometimes I find myself thinking “if only I could afford that new camera or another lens, then I could get better images” and that’s when I remind myself that people have been producing great work for over a century on much less sophisticated gear than I have now.
"I like to keep my kit as simple as possible so, instead of having multiple lenses and filters to choose from, I am forced to get creative to make the images I want."
I watch these films religiously, paying close attention to behind the scenes segments and I can’t help but want to get out and see remote places and the strange creatures that live there. Wildlife photography becomes a way of reliving experiences and sharing them with others. With both my landscape and wildlife photography my aim is to spread a love for the diversity of life so I always try to vary my subjects and locations as much as possible, almost like a highlight reel of life on Earth.
"A great image will grab your attention and then keep it, affecting more than just your sense of sight."
If I’m working on an image of a mountain landscape in winter, I want the viewer to feel the cold wind and if it’s a hot summer image I want the viewer to feel like they can smell the heat. I have travelled a fair bit and have always sought to spend more time in each location than if I were holidaying. I have lived and worked in several different countries as a way to explore the place more thoroughly and would definitely recommend it to all young people. Living and working in a foreign country forces you to live like a local rather than a tourist and this gives you a whole new perspective of a place, and of course it gives you more time to explore and photograph lesser known areas.
"I’ve picked fruit in the Australian outback, cooked in a chalet in the French Alps, monitored cargo on container ships, all with my camera in tow, and it’s given me an appreciation and respect for all types of people and places."
Most of the time I was traveling by myself – which I would definitely recommend doing early in your life – but at some point I started to envy the couples and groups I would see travelling together around the world. Nowadays I find that travel itself is much more enjoyable when you have someone to experience it with, so meeting my partner, Sasha, being an avid traveller herself, has made a big difference. I think travelling with someone who is not a photographer also helps to make sure you aren’t living your life through a camera lens.
"It’s important to leave the camera behind sometimes and just enjoy the present."
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