Transcendent Beauty

The first book you need to pay attention to is the manual for your camera.

- Andrea Rodrigues

1. Please tell us something about yourself. What made you pursue photography, especially landscape photography?

My name is Alexander Vershinin. I was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1975.

I became interested in photography in elementary school when I was about 10 years old. Those days there were no digital cameras, and I had to develop the films myself and print photos without printers. Today I specialise in large-format, fine art landscape panoramic photography. I started doing it professionally in the early 2000s, when I began to travel a lot around the world. Later, simple tourist trips turned into big photo tours and expeditions, and I began to bring panoramic photographs from different parts of our planet.

Over time, this hobby grew into a profession. My works were selected for the Annual GEO calendar in 2016. Part of my work was bought by Educa - a puzzles manufacturing company, and I still find puzzles with my photo arts in different stores around the world. I still take part in many photo contests. Maybe someone will say that such contests do not bring any profit to the photographers, but they allow you to keep yourself in professional shape, not to relax and not fall below the bar that you set for yourself. Many organisers of photo contests request me to leave my work with them in order to showcase the images in future exhibitions depicting nature photos or simply beautiful landscapes.

2. You state that you are a self-taught photographer, having picked up your knowledge only from books. Can you recommend some good books which inspired you and in what way?