Alexey Stiop
I was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. It was long time ago. Actually I’m not THAT old at the time of this writing. I’ve lived in the States since 1991. I am a chemist and a chemical engineer by trade (or at least by what the diploma said) and have worked in the chemical field for all these years. Now I live in Indianapolis and work for a lubricant manufacturing company called D-A Lubricant. I am in charge of research and development and as of recent also responsible for taking portraits of our sales people. This happened after they found out that I like photography. Speaking of which – that is what this site is about.
Now here comes a staple phrase about my dad giving me my first camera when I was 11 (12, 13 or 10 – am I really supposed to remember?). OK, but this is actually true! Of course since this was a long time ago (see above) the camera was all manual, didn’t even have an exposure meter and used film – the word “digital” only applied to a fancy little machine that one of my classmates once brought to school. It was called cal-cu-la-tor.
Everything back then was black-and-white and so was my photography. I have always loved to travel and hauled my camera with me everywhere. The magic of developing and printing pictures captivated me and I spent countless long nights in this pursuit.
I continued with film photography until only a few years ago. It’s all digital now. Long gone the problems that kept me away from digital photography – affordable storage media and wide angle lenses. (advantages of digital)
Photography was just a hobby for me until the end of 2006 when I discovered stock photography (see more about it in links section). The hobby turned into a business now. It is always exciting to find my work used in commercial designs and magazines. I am also starting to pursue some other opportunities displaying my work at local galleries and art shows.
First my pictures were for me and my family and friends who would heroically put up with my barrage of photo albums. Then my pictures had an entirely different audience – commercial designers looking to compose advertisements and websites.
From these two very different perspectives it can be hard to create a unifying theme. Here is the closest I can come up with: I try to bring out in my pictures the feeling of the moment. I try to convey the texture, scale, vibrancy, vastness or silliness of that moment in time to share.
Hopefully I have accomplished some success in that goal and can now count you as a part of my audience too!
Thank you for visiting,
