A conversation with Anton Jankovoy, Professional Travel Photographer

Anton Jankovoy, professional travel photographer, will be judging the Tilt Shift Photo Contest.

Anton Jankovoy is professional travel-photographer, shooting in such genres as travel, landscape and portrait photography. The head manager of Zhytomyr photographers club «Photosphere» and the author of the project "Photo-Travel". Lately travels much, arranges seminars and master classes on travel photography. Participated in many domestic and international photo-exhibitions. Anton has obtained a bronze award at the "FEP (Federation of European Photographers) Professional Photographer of the Year 2011" and bronze award in the russian speaking countries at "Best Photographer 2011". He workes with such big agencies, companies and publishing houses as Apple, National Geographic, Getty Images, Yahoo, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Silverkris Airlines, El Pais, Photographer, PhotoTravel, PhotoDelo, Himalaya MapHouse and ets. Anton Jankovoy: «My only aspiration in a photography is to wake up in everybody the realization of life. That is the only one way to feel this world the way it is and how it was created for us, the way the children see it» Interests: The East, travelling, photography, mysticism, esoterism, raw food diet, mountains, nature, silence .

Hi Anton, tell us a little bit about yourself:

I take photographs and I consider myself to be a traveller, in every possible meaning of the word. Life, for me, is a journey, constantly enjoying new experiences, and communicating with interesting people. I love getting to know new cultures, traditions, and spiritual teachings of other people. I love to discover nature – landscape etc.

How did you get started with photography?

I took my dad’s camera, a Zenith, bought a roll of colour slides and went off taking pictures of bugs, spiders, butterflies, landscapes, that kind of thing. At that time I didn’t know anything about exposure, aperture, focus and the like – I thought a camera was a magic box with a button that I needed to press in order to get a picture. Of course nothing worked out that first time. I was very disappointed in those results and photography, but I didn’t lose my inspiration in the beauty of life and nature itself.

Where do you like shooting, do you have any favorite country?

I’m interested in untouched nature and the places on Earth that have not been influenced by globalization, regions that have preserved the nature, the culture and tradition of the local native people. For thousands of years Nepal had been a rather “closed” country because of the remoteness of the region, and still some regions are closed to the modern Western civilization. The first visitors came to Nepal only about 60 years ago, and it became “open” to foreigners only in the 1970s when hippies discovered it. Pokhara, the second biggest city of Nepal, was considered a “hippie” capital in the 70s – it’s a real paradise on Earth with beautiful views over the Annapurna Himalayan Range. This is what makes Nepal special for my heart.

What is your favorite camera and what equipment do you use?

Right now I’m only using digital – I have Canon equipment with the standard travel-photographer kit (fisheye (15 f/2.8), wide-angle lens (24 f/1.4), portrait lens (50 f/1.4), telephoto lens (70-200 f/2.8) and tele-convertor (2x)). Of course I would like to bring a wide range of the lenses, but for the traveling I cannot take a whole bunch with me, especially in the mountains, where every extra kilogram is a substantial weight. I always carry a tripod with a special photo and video-head. I also use a big range of filters (gradients, neutral and polarizing), which provides more possibilities for difficult lighting conditions and experiments. I never use an artificial light, that’s why I don’t carry a flash with me – I use only a reflector 5-in-1.

What inspires you when taking photos?

The endless beauty of nature mostly inspires me. That is a real source of the inspiration for me.The ideal way the natural world is.

Do you have any plans for future travels?

Currently I have plans to go to Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Brunei this spring. But I think every place in the world is interesting and I would like to travel almost everywhere.