It’s my pleasure to introduce our newest guest contributor, the talented Alena Shminke.

My name is Alena Shminke. I was born and lived most of my life in Russia, but over the last two years, I have moved to Estonia. Frankly speaking, I’m a newcomer to photography, and I can’t say I was always interested in photography. I graduated from medical university and worked as a clinical psychologist for several years. Although medicine is a far stretch from art I was always interested and tried my hand in different art forms.

When I moved to Tallinn I had a lot of free time and since I couldn’t find a job I started to think about getting an education in the field of art. I chose photography because creating visual images is the most interesting to me and I have a lot of ideas I wish to embody. I really enjoy analog photography. I like to shoot on film, to develop films and to make prints in a darkroom.

Because of my interest in film photography, a vital part of my work is monochrome.
Possibly the most typical genre for me is fine-art and the most of the images you can see on my blog are still life’s and emotional (self) portraits.The personal part of photography for me is the more I shoot the more I feel that photography is something stronger than me. It makes me stand up and act even when I feel broken.

Alena

You can see more of my work on my blog – here