About

I was born in Athens Greece on a cold February morning. It was a Friday. I grew up in a loving family which I adore and have a sister that kept me company as I grew up. I graduated from a Greek public school and moved to United Kingdom for university to become an engineer with no interest in photography whatsoever apart from knowing how a camera worked, an interest that followed me since childhood when I was misfortunately allowed access to my grandads cameras which I proudly destroyed trying to find out how they worked. I acquired one degree in Civil Engineering BEng (Hons) and an MSc in the same field from University of Brighton before moving further north to UMIST to get my second MSc in Geotechnical Engineering in 2003 and I am still struggling to get in their notable alumni list ever since. They completely ignore me! Besides socializing mostly with engineers for five years my fondest moments still are mingling with art students especially the ones studying photography and couldn’t help feeling a bit envious wishing I had the guts to follow art instead of engineering even though at the time I had no interest in photography as a profession. It was the free thinking that appealed to me the most.

 Fast forward through the hazy university years I returned to Greece and worked in construction for half a decade until Greece was hit hard by recession and everything came to a halt. During that time my interest in photography was rekindled, digital photography was creeping in and I became more active primarily capturing landscapes which turned out to be my main focus. It was at that time where everyone in Greece was trying to find their bearings when I devised a plan to move away from Athens and so by 2012 I packed all my stuff along with my cat and moved to a small mountainous village of ten residents in north western Greece and focused solely on photography. For seven years now I venture into forests, high peaks, and snowy mountains all within the vicinity of my current residence trying to find myself and display pieces of my personality in my photos. In the last couple of years, along with a friend of mine, Kostas Petrakis, with whom we have formed the company Light-Explorers, I have expanded my horizons in places like Tuscany, the Dolomites, Norway and Iceland trying to win a personal bet.

 The bet has to do with my “philosophy” towards photography which has drastically changed since the early years of 2004 when I first consciously accepted photography in my life. I believe in the inner landscape not the landscape that exists right in front of my eyes. I enjoy honesty in my work and I passionately strive for it and by honesty I mean being true to myself shedding all those layers that society and culture has added on me throughout the years trying to find the clear view that we all had as a child. I could go on and on about how liberating that process is and how it allows you to photograph anything and everywhere but I will leave something for my future blogs. If you enjoy what you read and connect with what you see please subscribe to my newsletter to be notified about future workshops where we try to put that mentality into action. I would love hearing from you 

Sincerely  

Konstantinos Vasilakis