Himalayas through Storm Clouds, by Sergiy Kadulin

We, a group of six Ukrainians, once trekked in Eastern Sikkim, the Himalayas, in October 2010. On the second day of trekking we started to climb in the rainy morning, and ascended in the grey clouds. When we almost reached our destination, mountain village Tshoka (3000 meters), it stopped raining. But still, there was fog and grey clouds around us. Our group was above me on the road, and for some unknown reasons I stopped and looked back. It was nice breakouts of the clouds, through which I saw the Himalayas behind us. The shape was something similar to an eye. I even thought to name the photograph “The Eye of the Himalayas”. There were three photographers in our group, but no one turned back, so I kept the privilege of having this unique gift from the Earth.

Canon 5D Mark II with EF 24-70 f/2.8L | ISO 100 | Focal length 70mm | Exposure f/4 @ 1/125sec
Himalayas through Storm Clouds, by Sergiy Kadulin

Award Winner: Photo of the Day | April 27
Award Score: 65 (Value 13, Clarity 12, Composition 16, Style 11, Skill 14)
Photo of the Day Award Category: Landscape Photography
Photograph Location: Near Tshoka village, Himalaya mountains, Eastern Sikkim | India

Photographer: Sergiy Kadulin (Kyiv, Ukraine) Registered
Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1967, Sergiy Kadulin grew up in the family with his sister and mother, as his father died when they were two years old. He graduated from the military aviation academy (avionics engineer), and later on, from MBA school (IBR school, based in Ukraine). While majority of his professional career was with information technology, where he worked for such companies as American Power Conversion, hp, Microsoft, and now working with Apple as director of Apple VAD in Ukraine, but photography is his greatest passion and hobby.

Sergiy’s first experience was with his grandfather’s camera (made in 1936), and while he was studying in school he started mode in-depth learning of photography, including dark room processing, shooting on color films, etc. His first own camera (shared with his sister) was Smena-8M, which was very popular in Soviet Union as basic and very affordable camera for children. In upper class his mother gave him a gift – Zenit-12SD, which was his first real film DSLR and he enjoyed it for many years. Later on, while being on business trip in Canada, he bought Minolta with set of lenses, which was far more advanced one. Large part of his film photo collection was made with it. Sergiy was quite skeptical towards digital photography at the beginning, and switched completely to digital workflow by late 90’s until early 2000. About 7 years ago he graduated from the professional photography course in the Kyiv School of Photography, and later on, continued to study (distance learning course of professional photography) in New York Institute of Photography. He also attended number of training courses in different other schools and on top of it, learn new interesting areas online. He did his first photo exhibition in April, 2011, which was named “Sikkim. Beginning” and was devoted to his trekking in Himalaya, Sikkim, India, in 2010. Sergiy’s favorite type of photography is travel and landscape; however he likes reportage as well. He does devote significant portion of his time to internal growth and development, which to his strong opinion, is the most important part of any creative human. He is trying to use photography as means to share his deep love to the world, to other people and nature, and pass warmth of his heart to them.

Website: http://www.serge-photo.com
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skadulin/
Gallery: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/gallery/1414006/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sergiy.Kadulin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/skadulin