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Victoria Nefedova
@montreal_sky
Best of the week 25 at #nomadict 2020
My passion for photography was born in 2004, when I got a camera for my 14th birthday. It was a basic Olympus zoom camera. I was living in Moscow, Russia that time and decided to focus on portrait photography since nature in Moscow is so-so. I always felt that I wanted to shoot something more exciting than portraits, and I started to travel more and more searching for jaw dropping views in different countries in Europe and Asia, and later the US and Canada.
"I started to realize that landscape photography is what my soul really wants."
In 2017 my husband was transferred from Microsoft in Russia to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA. We packed all our stuff and booked a one way flight from Moscow to Seattle. I left my IT career in Russia and started to search something to accomplish in my life. Washington is one of the most beautiful places in US, with plenty of lakes, forests and mountains. And unlike in other Asian or European countries, it has everything for recreational tourism.
"That place was such a good fit for me, so that we've quickly became huge fans of hiking, camping and backpacking."
"While we were adopting to US life, we started to travel more and more."
Good roads, affordable hotels and cheap flights allowed us to visit a lot of great places in US. Washington, Oregon, California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii etc. I wanted to show my Russian speaking subscribers that US is not just New York and Los Angeles. Outside of travel and amazing places, my husband and I wanted to become “more Americans”, so we’ve bought our first house, 3 cars (sport car, SUV and off course, a pickup truck) and even got a real estate license. I started to write about American life and our explorations; learning English, working in a multinational environment, fixing cars on a driveway, remodeling homes, how not to overpay for something, our tips and tricks from real estate and so on.
"But the visual part always was about travel and showing beautiful places to my subscribers."
"The winning shot was made recently on a Boulder Falls hike, an hour north from Seattle."
As usual, it was a rainy weekend day after a sunny week, but we’ve decided to give it a try anyway. At some point of time I noticed a thick fog settling on a forest. It was disappearing and then returning back in few minutes again and again. That created an interesting vibe in a regular Washington forest, and there is nothing too special about that place if there is no fog. I’m glad that I was able to capture the atmosphere of that moment in my shot. I quite like the editing process, and I spend a lot of time on that trying different styles and color schemes. Sometimes it is even more exciting than taking the photo itself, somewhere in the woods. My preferences change from time and time. Right now I prefer “juicy” pictures, with strong blue, green and orange vibes. I think the winning shot is a good example of that approach.
WINNING PHOTOGRAPH
BEST OF THE WEEK 25
My photos and the way I edit them represent a magic impressive moment of our travels and trips, that comes to mind every time we think about that place or country. I guess the most impactful for me was our trip to Iceland. We were there twice – in February and in August. Same island, same hikes, but two very different experiences. Winter Iceland met us with severe winds and snow storms. It was really hard to make a shot when you can barely stand, fighting with the wind. We’ve stuck in a little town called Vik, that became isolated in a middle of the storm, with both roads blocked for our own safety. We’ve missed our flight, and had to spend $800 the day after just to fly away from the island anywhere.
I face such situations all the time. For example, you go somewhere and you expect to find a view that you saw somewhere else. But instead, you find an even better view, or a have a different weather, or it is a different season. At that moment you need to forget what you’ve visualized in your head and create a new image, that no one ever did before. You need to shoot in less than ideal conditions, and maybe those conditions are even more charming than ideal ones.
"It is this flexibility and ability to adapt what photography teaches me every time."
Photography is an invaluable teacher, it helps me develop personally and professionally as there’s so much more that comes with the whole process than just pressing the shutter. It’s so much about experiential learning and because landscape photography involves so many different activities, you pick up many lessons that will be useful for the rest of your life.
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