Chasing light. Preserving moments.

My journey into photography did not begin with a camera. It began with a desire to travel.

As a child, the most exciting time of the year came at the end of the school term, when our school organized trips to different landmarks around Bulgaria. These excursions were among the few opportunities I had to leave my home village and see with my own eyes the places I had previously only read about in books or seen on television.

My family did not have the means to travel often. Occasionally, we would spend a week by the sea, but crowded beaches, busy resorts, and streets lined with souvenir stalls were never what I was looking for. Even then, although I could not have explained it, I felt drawn to something different — natural landscapes, unfamiliar roads, and the feeling that something new might be waiting beyond the next turn.

That is why I always looked forward to the school trips with such excitement. I carried a small black film camera with me and tried to preserve memories of the places we visited. I knew nothing about composition, exposure, or light. Most of my photographs were simple portraits taken as souvenirs, but looking back, I realize that these were my first unconscious steps into photography.

When I entered high school, those excursions became a thing of the past, but I discovered another way to travel — through the pages of magazines.

Around that time, the Bulgarian edition of National Geographic was launched, and I never missed an issue. I read every article, every line, and every photograph caption. The stories and images transported me to places that, at the time, seemed almost impossible to reach.

That was when I began to dream that one day I might become a traveller myself — exploring the world, discovering remarkable places, meeting different people, and preserving something of those experiences through photographs.

Many years passed before I had the opportunity to return to that dream.

In 2018, I was going through a difficult period in my life. I had lost my sense of direction and was searching for something that could once again give me purpose and the desire to move forward. Then I came across one of Scott Kelby’s books on digital photography. Its clear and practical advice awakened the interest that had remained somewhere inside me since childhood.

Around the same time, a friend gave me an old digital camera — an Olympus E-420. From that moment, photography gradually grew from a curiosity into a genuine passion.

I began experimenting with techniques I had never heard of before. One of the first was long-exposure photography. I travelled to waterfalls around the country and tried to transform moving water into something soft and almost unreal. The results were often far from what I had imagined, but every mistake encouraged me to learn more and try again.

Over time, I realized that landscape photography was what attracted me most.

For me, it is not simply a way to create a beautiful image. It is an opportunity to step away from the pressure of everyday life, reconnect with nature, and find a sense of stillness. Waiting for the light, walking along unfamiliar paths, and spending time beside the water or beneath an open sky helped me overcome the personal crisis I had been experiencing.

Photography gave me a new direction, a new purpose, and a reason to keep searching.

One of my earliest ambitions was to photograph the Milky Way.

My old Olympus and the lenses I owned were not particularly well suited to night photography. I believe that equipment alone does not create a powerful photograph. Far more important are the photographer’s vision, patience, and ability to recognize the right moment. Sometimes, a little luck is also necessary — being in the right place when the light, weather, and landscape come together.

Some photographs, however, also present technical limitations. Over time, I changed several camera bodies, watched courses, read books, and learned from the work of photographers I admired. My desire to photograph the night sky pushed me to understand light, composition, and photographic equipment more deeply.

After many attempts, I finally created the image I had dreamed of for so long.

Today, I no longer travel alone.

Beside me is someone who shares my passion for the road and all the moments that exist behind a photograph — waking hours before sunrise, waiting patiently for the right light, and spending entire nights beneath a sky filled with stars.

My partner is with me on every journey, through every sunrise and every sunset. She supports me as I continue to grow, discover new places, and turn distant dreams into real experiences.

Thanks to her, I fulfilled another of my greatest dreams — travelling to Iceland. A place that had existed for years only in magazines and in the photographs of other travellers suddenly became a real landscape in front of my own camera.

Perhaps this is what I continue to search for through photography — the same sense of wonder I felt during those childhood school trips, when the world seemed vast, unfamiliar, and filled with possibilities.

Every photograph on this website is part of that journey. Behind each image lies more than a place and a moment of light. There is anticipation, effort, silence, and a personal experience.

I do not photograph nature only to show what it looks like. I try to preserve something of the way I felt while standing before it.

And although I have now visited some of the places I once knew only from books and magazines, my curiosity remains unchanged. I still believe that beyond the next turn there is another landscape, another story, and another moment worth remembering.