At the age of 10 my uncle bought me a Russian copy of Voigtländer (or Rolleiflex). As a teenager I learned basics film development and dark room printing from my friend's father, an accomplished photographer. At that time if you wanted photography you did everything yourself.

In 1999 anticipating great opportunities during up-coming camping trip to Zimbabwe I decided to get serious and begun reading photography books by John Shaw, Bryan Peterson (one of the best instructors) and others. I learned that you need to shoot what you really love in order to get results. Hence landscapes and sports are my primary subjects.

The most important thing that I learned over the years is that equipment does not really matter (same goes for software). I never owned Photoshop, just Elements 2 and Lightroom 3, but have no time to really learn them. I'd rather get it right in the camera. My favorite camera function is "Delete".

I do some underwater photography when scuba diving , but success rate in this genre is low because of extremely limited time and exorbitant cost of practice. Considering the use P&S cameras without any strobes (www.redberryphoto.com/underwater) results are quite passable.