Blacksunlight Photography

Featured Photographer – Natalia Pokrovskaya

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Natalia Pokrovskaya, founder of www.cameragirls.ru and prominent advertising photographer. Like Yan Ming (our last featured photographer), Natalia’s photographs have a certain surrealistic feel to them, made even more so by her excellent grasp of colour and composition. You can find out more about her at either www.cameragirls.ru or her own website pokrovskaya.com/.

1. What initially got you started into photography?

I never thought I’d become a photographer. I mean, I had a point-and-shoot camera, like everyone, taking pictures of puppies and flowers, but I was too lazy to take them seriously. In fact, I started taking these pictures because I was too lazy to draw, although I went to an art school when I was 14.

But then digital cameras came and I got excited about seeing the picture straight after the moment it was taken. I hate waiting, and this way of photography was right for me. I bought a 4-megapixel “prosumer” (now it sounds really funny) Casio point-and-shoot, and some time after that I took a trip to North Pole as a journalist part of a tourist expedition on an atomic icebreaker. There was a photographer in the crew, and he explained me the basics. That’s how I got interested and this interest has only been growing ever since.

Though, I was sort of shy to call myself a photographer for rather a long time. My inner perfectionist required me to deserve that right in my own eyes. )

2. What is your favourite camera, one that you can shoot with from now until the end of time?

I guess that’s a Hasselblad 503cw, because you know, they serve you for ages, unless you throw it against a wall studded with 9-inch nails. I was long time afraid of the square format, I just didn’t see in it. But once I tried it, I fell in love. And, for a lazy photographer like me, film does half of the job.

But there is another one, my faithful dear Canon 5D. With this camera I grew significantly as photographer. It took pictures at the intimate moments of my life, as well as pure commercial shots.

And last, but not least, is a small Olympus Stylus Epic Dlx that makes those amazing cinematic-style pictures. Sorry, seems like I will keep all the three until the end of time.

3. What inspires you and keeps you creatively stimulated?

On one hand, I absorb a lot of information, mostly visual, from art and design world. I look a lot at other photographers’ work, from the most famous to absolutely unknown people I find on the Internet.

On the other hand, there’s life that often brings me moments that make me as excited as I would be if a great creative idea would’ve come into my mind.

4. You do a lot of portraits as well as general street photography, but your subjects always appear to be in isolation. Aside from this you also do some landscape and object photography. What would you describe your photographic style as?

My style is “sexy chick with a camera”. )
Well, I’d also say that I try to photograph ordinary people as if they were stars, and vice versa – bring out the common and human part in celebrities, as if they were your friends or next door neighbors. I love to mix spontaneous with staged. And I love to make people look beautiful in my pictures, maybe the way they’ve never seen themselves before.

5. Where do you see your photography going and developing to in the next 5 years?

I want to do more magazine work, to try more complex shoots. By complex I don’t necessarily mean staged, with huge setup and props, but carrying an interesting idea, a creative twist, an experiment, a mix of unexpected ingredients. Recently, I even have read a small lecture on synthesis in photography: the merging of different techniques, equipment and genres giving birth to something new. That’s where, I think, the future of photography lies.

I want to explore and, when possible, create something new. Well, and, of course, I want to be a rich and famous photographer, I was made for it ).