I'm a landscape and wildlife photographer, located in Dobrogea region, south-east of Romania. I just love being outside, exploring the wild nature and taking photos in an effort to inspire people to look at nature with much more care and awareness.
Photography
I got serious about photography when I was 23. Back then I bought my very first DSLR camera. It was a Nikon D5100 with a 18-55mm f/3.5–5.6 lens. The camera really changed my life and it opened a whole new world in front of me. At the beginning I was photographing the landscapes near my place where I live. I was experiencing different photographic techniques, learning from mistakes and searching for my own style, my own vision of the natural world. Spending most of my time outside photographing landscapes, inevitably I started to have a lot of interest in the wildlife living in those areas that I was exploring. Little by little I was searching for new species, learning their behavior in an effort to capture unique images of them, and expanding the exploring area from the Black Sea, lagoons, or Danube Delta up to the Carpathian Mountains.
Dobrogea region is often called "the land of birds" here in Romania, and I have to say that I feel very lucky to live here. Wild nature is about 15 mins away by car from where I live. From my window I can hear in the evening the golden jackals calling, or the owls in the forest near my house. It is a real blessing. I got so much into photograph animals because of the abundant wildlife of Dobrogea. Danube Delta for example, is the 3rd in size in Europe. It expands over 5700 km² and just 10% of it is dry land. It's a paradise for water birds, and for me as well :) Dobrogea has a big lagoon which is located in the south of Danube Delta. Here I like to spend my time searching for wildlife. There are a lot of water birds but also mammals, such as roe deers, foxes, badgers, jackals or ground squirrels.
My gear
I'm a Nikon echosystem user since the beginning of my photography career. I'm using two cameras, a Nikon D500 DSLR camera and a Nikon Z6 II Mirrorless camera. The D500 is mostly used in wildlife photography, while the Z6II is mostly used for landscape. There are situations where I'm using the Z6II for shooting wildlife, especially mammals because of it's silent shutter function. On those two cameras, I'm mounting a Nikkor 16-35mm f/4, a Nikkor 24-120mm f4, a Nikkor 70-200mm f4, a Samyang 14mm f/2.8, a Nikkor 500mm f4 ED VR and a Nikkor TC 1.4x TC III teleconverter. I'm also using different types of optical filters from Cokin and Hoya: a GND2 gradual filter, a GND4 gradual filter, a GND8 Soft gradual filter, a Hoya PRO ND16 filter and a Hoya circular polarizer filter. As for tripods, I'm using a Gitzo GT3532LS tripod with a Markins Q20i-q ball head and a Markins BV-22 adaptor for gimbal conversion capability. All the cameras, lenses, filters and other accessories are being transported everywhere I go using a Gitzo Adventury 30L Backpack.
Career
I'm a computer network and cybersecurity engineer at the Nuclear Power Plant here in Cernavoda. I'm working in the IT industry for more than 10 years but I'm also looking forward towards a career in nature conservation. The approach to such a career in parallel with my main job, is because the way I feel about nature in general. Nature gave me so many great moments in all those years that now I feel indebted to nature and this makes me believe that I need to give something back to it. That's why now I'm an active member of the Romanian Nature Photography Association called FORONA, which is focusing on helping to promote the nature and it's protection through photography. Also, I'm working on a personal project which involves education. I'm teaching people about nature conservation using nature photography courses developed by me. For now, those courses are taught in the summer academy of Atlantykron (for more information visit www.atlantykron.org) but also will be available online soon.
Partners
