The photo story of Igor Shpilenok began in adolescence with, surprisingly, a burning resentment at the surrounding injustice. In 1973, when he was 13 years old, in a forest in his native Bryansk region, he saw a field of snowdrops that struck him with its beauty. And Igor so wanted to show this unearthly beauty to other people that he begged for a camera from his grandmother for two weeks. And when he returned to his former place, with chagrin he saw only summer grass.
I had to wait a whole year. And so, when next spring he came to the same place with bated breath, he was dumbfounded.
Instead of a familiar landscape and such long-awaited snowdrops, fresh traces of a caterpillar tractor went across the clearing, and felled trees lay around. The emotions experienced then predetermined his whole future life.
Now Igor is one of the best Russian animal photographers and a promoter of the idea of wildlife conservation, actively involved in the creation and operation of nature reserves.
The first, back in 1987, was the "Bryansk Forest", then there were others. Today, Igor is torn between his beloved Bryansk forests and the Kronotsky Reserve in Kamchatka, where the ecosystem has been preserved almost in its original state, and animals do not at all consider man the king of nature.
His photographs are amazing. This is contact with a completely different world, where there is not a single supermarket for hundreds of kilometers around.
In his photographs, animals, as a rule, live their own lives. Hunting, mating games, training of cubs - all this happens in front of Igor's lens.
How does he manage to achieve such a degree of involvement in the ordinary life of wild animals?
It's simple: you need to become a familiar and safe element of the world around them.
He himself tells about it this way: “Once I spent five months in a hut on the Pacific Ocean in the Kronotsky Reserve. Moved in October.
For two weeks I saw animals only at a great distance. The first to stop being afraid of me were local foxes and bears, then wolverines and sables. There was an opportunity to film their interaction with each other.
But, of course, to shoot the most wary animals, you have to use carefully prepared hides and telephoto lenses.
By the way, for many years Igor prefers exclusively Nikon and even infected the whole family with this preference, up to young sons who are actively following in the footsteps of their father.
The main thing for Igor is not just to make a beautiful shot, from which hereditary townspeople will groan at the exhibition.
“Photography is not an end in itself for me. First of all, it is a powerful tool in the main business of my life - the protection of wildlife. It is wild, therefore the main and only theme of my work is Russian specially protected natural areas: nature reserves, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries.”
But still, the pictures of Igor Shpilenok are professionally and soulfully taken photographs that can not only arouse the momentary interest of a bored viewer, but touch the soul.
Indeed, in each of us, although somewhere very deeply, there is a primitive man, with his reverence for wildlife. And sometimes he still gives voice.
01.08.2016 Texts / Interview
Igor Shpilenok: “I live in bearish places”
Interviewed Alena Bondareva
Photo: Igor Shpilenok / shpilenok.livejournal.com
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Nanny for bears or about documentary filming
- Igor, in 2016 the film “Bears of Kamchatka. Beginning of life". Is this your first experience with a video camera? Are you no longer interested in photography?
The dream of a movie is an old one. For more than ten years I have been living in the most bearish places in Russia, and maybe the world. I have days when I meet more than 100 bears a day. In Kamchatka there are camping huts, where from the roof you can see 30-40 individuals at the same time. Naturally, I have accumulated a lot of impressions. You realize how interesting and intelligent this animal is, how it is behaviorally similar to a person. And you understand why the bear became a deity for many primitive peoples.
But before I talked about bears with the help of photography, I was always afraid of cinema, because the film is a collective art, where you need to unite the interests of many people, and in those places where I work better, of course, to be alone. But some time ago I realized that not everything can be conveyed by photography. And sooner or later you have to take on the film. And, I'll tell you, I had to take it almost out of nowhere, because in Russia, animalistic documentaries are practically not filmed. I saw how Western teams do it when they come to Kamchatka to make films about our bears. I know that this is a big and serious, and most importantly, expensive work. Nevertheless, I decided to unite interested people (there were a lot of them). And last spring we started filming. I drove to the very south of Kamchatka, settled in a hut on the shores of Kambalnoye Lake a month before the bears begin to leave their dens. I found about 10 lairs, from which recently born cubs appeared. And among these 10 - only two, where the bears were willing to be followed by people with cameras.
Photo: Igor Shpilenok / shpilenok.livejournal.com
How do you photograph wild animals in general? Are you disguised? Tracking?
When you live among bears for years, you begin to feel them, you know a lot about them. Naturally, if you just come to Kamchatka for a month, when the she-bears leave their dens, not knowing the area, you can walk around the area for years and not find a single den. But I'm well prepared. The fact is that Kamchatka animals do not have such a fear of people as, for example, in Siberia. The year before last, I traveled all over Russia, including through Siberia by car, and did not see a single bear near the road, and those that I came across in the distance ran away.
- This is not surprising, they are still hunted in Siberia.
Yes, the bear is an enviable hunting trophy. And the Siberian people are so arranged, I mean the inhabitants countryside, if they are going somewhere in a UAZ or a motor boat, be sure to take a carbine. Therefore, the animals in those places are “pocketed”, they are afraid of a person. In Kamchatka, the situation is different, there is a large Kronotsky nature reserve and the South Kamchatka reserve, where effective protection has been established. Therefore, almost all the shooting of bears that are made in Russia takes place there. But even in Kamchatka, not every bear will agree to be filmed. Only 9-10% of the bear population knows that humans are not dangerous. These bears even try to capitalize on being around humans.
Photo: Igor Shpilenok / shpilenok.livejournal.com
Let's say, when I was shooting in one place for a long time (and I'm leaving on an expedition for at least half a year), there were times when animals just got used to me. This opens up great opportunities for photographing intimate moments that a person who has come to Kamchatka for two or three days will never make a stranger.
Also with bears, after 10 years of work in the Kronotsky Reserve and the South Kamchatka Reserve, many of them have become my friends and even neighbors. I understand how they will behave. And they know that neither I nor the people who came with me are dangerous. I even had such cases when bears made me their nanny. Bears have a different family than humans. The male is only the carrier of the gene pool, he meets with the female for conception, and after family affairs not interested. Moreover, on occasion, it can also devour a bear cub. The larger the male, the more often he is a cannibal. That is, it eats individuals of its own species and often its own children. And that is why females with small cubs are afraid of males. And old bears, especially those who have a negative experience of relationships with humans, avoid people. And the females know it. That's why cubs are brought to me every year. After all, I sit with a camera and a tripod in one place for a week or two. They are used to the fact that I am part of the landscape for them and do not offend anyone. They leave the cubs near me, and they themselves go 100–200 meters to fish. This is how a special relationship with bears develops. Actually, I do photography, and now also cinema, just because I see a lot of things that I can’t keep in myself, I want to definitely tell about them.
- Bears, which get used to you, trade in robberies?
This problem is related to the protection of bears. People sometimes act recklessly. They train wild animals for addiction. And in Kamchatka, the most dangerous killer bears are those that enter summer cottages and cities, attracted by waste and smells of garbage dumps. You can't feed wild animals. A baited bear is always an animal whose fate ends in shooting. Because, once having tasted human food, he very quickly realizes that this is an easy prey, and he will definitely come again. Bear swill is a misfortune of the Kamchatka capital and settlements. Almost every fish farm has its own landfill. People do not drown waste in water, do not dispose of it. Therefore, sometimes in Kamchatka, from several dozen to hundreds of bears are shot a year. But in the same Kronotsky Reserve there are cordons where inspectors live, who do not leave food waste where bears can get it. And therefore, animals have no conflicts with people on this basis.
- Do you live only in huts in nature reserves?
These are the cordons of the reserve. It is inconvenient to live in Kamchatka in a tent. You have probably heard about the Japanese Michio Hoshino, who was bullied by a bear.
A fake photo is circulating on the Internet. Allegedly, Michio Hoshino's last shot is of a bear tearing apart a tent. In fact, Michio died in the dead of night and there is no photograph of his death.
RA Help:But a hut in Kamchatka is a big word. We are talking about a small shed, knocked down from the boards. There is no timber in Kamchatka, mostly crooked stone birches. And the only way to deliver materials is by helicopter. Construction here is insanely expensive. Therefore, the huts are very simple. But I feel pretty good in them. Although life here is complicated. Sometimes in the morning you want to make yourself coffee, you pick up a bucket of water, and there is ice. Therefore, first you need to heat the hut, melt the ice, and only then make coffee.
In general, shooting wildlife in physical terms is not an easy task. Often you have to endure hardships, including cold. Animals in this sense are easier. The bear will climb into the den and sleep.
- When you shoot in winter, how many hours do you usually spend in the cold?
Once I wanted to shoot a wolverine, because we don't have many good pictures of wolverines. I dug a snow cave and sat in it at -15-20 degrees for four days. During these nights, my sleeping bag absorbed so much moisture that it stopped warming me, I had to go to the hut to dry. Of course, in order to achieve the desired result, you have to sit for hours, and sometimes days in the cold, sometimes even the equipment refuses to work.
Photo: Igor Shpilenok / shpilenok.livejournal.com
- Just wanted to ask how you solve this problem? Do you have a special technique?
I use professional Nikon cameras that shoot sports, people, landscapes.
- And what do you give so that the camera does not fail at low temperatures?
Photo: Igor Shpilenok / shpilenok.livejournal.com
Unfortunately, the camera can always fail, often the battery just freezes. Well, what are you doing? You warm the camera on your chest. And it happens that you can’t even cook food, the smoke from a fire or even a burner scares away animals. Therefore, you usually lower the grains into plastic bag, fill it with water and put it on your chest at night. While you sleep, they will swell, in the morning eat this porridge, "cooked" on your warmth. And with the equipment also, you store the batteries on your chest so that they do not cool down; Take your camera in your sleeping bag at night. There are other tricks as well. The most important thing is to keep the camera dry, the frost is not so terrible. And each next generation of cameras is more resistant to the external environment.
Shpilenok I. My Kamchatka neighbors. 370 days in the Kronotsky Reserve. Photobook. - M.: Samokat, 2013. - 192 p.
- There are a lot of foxes in the book “My Kamchatka Neighbors”. But now you only talk about bears, are you no longer interested in foxes?
For the last two years I have been working in a nature reserve in the very south of Kamchatka, and there are really fewer foxes there. The album "My Kamchatka Neighbors" describes life in the middle part of Kamchatka, the Kronotsky Reserve. Foxes now come across to me a little, so I tell less about them. But in parallel with the film “Bears of Kamchatka. The Beginning of Life”, I want to make a book as well. So that people learn as much as possible about bears, their conservation, and how to safely share the same territory with them.
Photo: Igor Shpilenok / shpilenok.livejournal.com
- What do you think about Charles Darwin and James Harriot?
How can you treat bright people? Without them, our life would be insipid. In general, I am often asked what photographers influenced me. But, I will tell you that I was shaped by naturalist writers (and there were no photo books in those places where I grew up). From foreign authors - this is Harriot, Darrell. Among the Russians are Konstantin Paustovsky and Mikhail Prishvin. And also Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov, photographer, journalist who wrote about nature in Komsomolskaya Pravda for half a century. And, of course, I was very lucky - I know Peskov personally. And we talked a lot with him about wildlife and its protection.
About Animal Photographers and Wildlife Documentary
- Why do you think such animalistic documentary films did not appear in Russia as in the West?
There are several reasons. The main thing is that we don't have a market. There are some big fanatics of video filming wild animals, but these people in today's conditions are unclaimed, almost everyone has a second profession that allows them to earn money. I am personally acquainted with many. Our television channels show foreign films, perhaps because it is easier to buy them than to organize and finance the filming ourselves. Movie theaters don't show documentaries about bears either. But it is possible that the situation will soon change.
Even 10-15 years ago we did not have animalistic photography. But when digital technologies arrived, and interest in wildlife began to flourish, photography revived in our country.
- Can you name some names?
There are many Russian photographers whose names are well known in the West. These people regularly win the most prestigious international competitions. Take the same Sergey Gorshkov, who shoots bears in Kamchatka. He is the winner of many British, French and German competitions and, in general, a very popular photographer. Now a new galaxy of young guys is growing up, 20-30 years old, breaking into animalistic photography.
Today the situation as a whole is changing for the better. Magazines have become more willing to take such photographs. In addition, there is the Internet, where it is very easy to demonstrate your work. But it's easier for photographers. Photography is an individual art, very rarely projects are shot by teams. And the equipment is much cheaper. There is no need to bring a team to Kamchatka: a sound engineer, an assistant, and so on. But there is less and less wildlife today. People can see it only on computer monitors, TV screen, in books. She is getting further and further away from us. And the attraction is growing. And now there are quite objective prerequisites for the rebirth of documentary animalistic cinema in Russia as well.
Photo: Igor Shpilenok / shpilenok.livejournal.com
- Are there any photographers you look up to, or at least those whose work you follow with interest?
There are photographers whose work I admire. And I am familiar with them. For example, French
The story of Igor Shpilenok's passion for photography, an animal photographer, the founder of the Bryansk Forest reserve, is special. It looks like a fairy tale, with which babies are lulled to bathe in wonderful dreams... Children's true emotion served as the foundation for a constant desire to capture and protect the immaculate, inexhaustible beauties of nature. Through constant interaction with nature, develop yourself, your body, feelings, mind, consciousness and soul.
- Igor, tell this story...
- We all come from childhood... The idea to start photographing nature came to me at the age of 13, when in my wanderings through the spring Bryansk forest I discovered an amazing meadow with hundreds of snowdrops. It seemed unfair to me that only I, one of the several billion people living on earth, see this beauty. For two weeks I persuaded my grandmother to buy me a camera, but when I returned to the clearing with a brand new Smena-8M, I realized that I was late. Tall summer grass grew in place of the flowers. For a whole year I waited for the next spring and at the same time studied photography, spending all the material resources available to me on this. On April 25, 1974, I returned to the clearing and could not believe my eyes. In place of clumps of snowdrops, the soil turned over by the caterpillars of tractors blackened, piles of freshly cut timber piled up. It was one of the strongest adolescent shocks that determined my future life. Since then, the camera has been my strongest and most faithful ally in the struggle to save the Bryansk Forest - the place where I was born, live and hope to die. 
- Now photography is not only a hobby, but also a tool of influence?
- With the help of photography (by publishing articles in newspapers and magazines, organizing photo exhibitions), I found allies, with whom I achieved the organization of the Bryansk Forest reserve and on September 1, 1987, became its first director, having worked in this position for ten years. During this time, my colleagues and I managed to create 12 more protected natural areas in the Bryansk Forest, where logging, land reclamation and other destructive species are prohibited. economic activity. Now almost 20 percent of the Bryansk forest has been withdrawn from economic use. Years heal the wounds inflicted by people on the Bryansk Forest, and hundreds of snowdrops are blooming again in my clearing - now they are not in danger.
Later, I felt that I could leave the bureaucratic side of my activity, and I left the post of director of the reserve in order to take up photography professionally. Now my priorities are to convey the beauty of the wild to people, to wake them up for conservation initiatives, while being in the thick of conservation events myself. And the geography of my current photo expeditions has expanded to the whole protected Russia. 
When I found out that you live in a nature reserve, to be honest, I envied you. I do not know a single person who can boast of such a residence permit. Tell us about the features of such a habitat.
- AT modern Russia 75 percent of the population is city dwellers. It's a pity, but most of them live in parallel world with wildlife. And the lives of many people, especially busy people who make politics and make money, have almost no contact with wildlife. Or it comes into contact in an ugly form, for example, in the form of helicopter hunts... Most residents of giant cities simply do not have experience of communicating with untouched nature. Meanwhile, all the key decisions on nature management, on the transformation of wildlife: where and how much to cut down forests, where to block rivers; where to pump oil; where to create nature reserves and national parks are prepared and taken in metropolitan areas. Most often, this is done by people who have no idea what wildlife is, who do not have personal experience of communicating with it. Truthful nature photography is meant to be a bridge between the modern urbanized world and wild nature. 
- I know that the Bryansk Forest is not the only reserve that you have chosen as your home.
- Actually, I am now in the Bryansk Forest reserve on vacation for the winter, and I work in the Kronotsky reserve in Kamchatka as an inspector for the protection of the reserve. The family is with me now. But when I am in the Kronotsky nature reserve, the family lives in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In the Kronotsky Reserve itself, conditions are too harsh and dangerous for small children.
I went to Kamchatka for two weeks to take pictures of the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, but for the fifth year now I cannot bring myself to return to my native Bryansk Forest. And my family has already moved here, and in the Kronotsky Reserve I am no longer a visiting photographer, but a nature conservation inspector. What does not let me go to a heated and equipped house in the Bryansk forest? Here, in the Kronotsky Reserve, I found myself in the primeval past of mankind, in the past for which we all yearn. The man here has little time to destroy. I am surrounded here by dramatic landscapes unspoiled by electric lines and highways.
Animals here sometimes do not know that man is the king of nature and does not give way to the paths, and there can be so many fish going to spawn that it is impossible to swim in the stream. Sometimes you have to live for weeks, or even months, in the most inaccessible places. And you see what is not given to others, you see what will never happen again. For example, in the spring of 2007, I came to the Valley of Geysers to shoot a topic about bears on volcanoes, but I had to become a chronicler of the dramatic change in the landscape of the reserve, when on June 3 the largest mudflow in Kamchatka in historical time descended and half of Russian geysers disappeared overnight. Giant stones stopped just half a meter from the houses where people were. 
- What did you feel when you saw with your own eyes the rarest excitement of nature?
- A stone-mud stream demolished all living things for two kilometers. When you see that the bank of the river, on which you recently spent many dozens happy hours with a camera on a tripod, waiting for the eruption of geysers, buried under a fifty-meter layer of stones and hot clay, you understand the fragility well human life! Now June 3 is the second birthday for me and my colleagues. But more than 20 large and medium-sized geysers remained only in photographs, and I had to be the last one to shoot them. 
An incredibly dramatic story, but your pictures are more like an illustrator of children's fairy tales than a chronicle photographer. Why do you shoot only nature and its inhabitants, and if a person gets into the frame, then by all means he is related to the listed characters?
Photography for me is not an end in itself. First of all, it is a powerful tool in the main business of my life - the protection of wildlife. It is wild, therefore the main and only theme of my work is Russian specially protected natural areas: nature reserves, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries.
Russia has 101 state reserves, 40 national parks and thousands of reserves. I am closely integrated into this life, I worked in all positions from the director of the reserve to the ordinary inspector of nature protection, I spent more than half of my life directly in the wild. Therefore, a person gets into my frame when he comes into contact with pristine nature, for example, if he works to preserve the reserve, save rare species of animals or plants. It can also be a poacher, a tourist. And outside of this context, I only shoot family and friends for a home album. 
- At what moments is nature especially grateful to the lens?
- I observe the most interesting moments on the borders of the states of nature. At the junction of night and morning. At the change of season. On the change of weather.
For example, twilight, morning or evening - my favorite time of day. This is not only a wonderful light, this is the time of the greatest activity of animals.
It used to be difficult to shoot at dusk. After the advent of Nikon D3, it was like new stage in creativity. This camera gives a great picture at exorbitant sensitivity values. Paired with my two favorite fast lenses, the AF-S NIKKOR 50mm 1:1.4G and AF-S NIKKOR 300mm 1:2.8G ED, I'm able to capture images that were never possible before. 
- By the way, do you have any technical or other tricks to give character to the photo?
- There is only one secret - to be near the subject as much as possible, to know as much as possible about them - then you manage to see more than others.
To endure separation from relatives, bad weather, sometimes hunger. This is possible only when you have emotions, an attitude towards what is being filmed, when you are motivated. 
People preen before shooting and generally act as if a loved one is looking at them. Have you tried to film mating seasons in animals? How much their coquetry conveys the picture?
- The mating season in nature is the peak of the flowering of life! Flowers in plants, mating games of animals. Nature does not save on reproduction and you can capture the most emotional moments. I was filming love games storks, cranes, waders, foxes, bears, and I have always wondered how similar they are to people in their manifestations of passion! 
- I know that you have come up with your own know-how for photographing animals.
- I do not go to the shooting for one or two days. My approach is to settle in a forest hut (or tent) for several weeks, and sometimes months. Become part of the landscape. In the Bryansk forest, I lived on the forest cordon for 10 years, and now I live in the abandoned village of Chukhrai, where, besides my family, there are 6 inhabitants. The first days all living things scatter from the stranger. Gradually, the animals stop being afraid of you. Once I spent five months in a hut on the Pacific coast in the Kronotsky Reserve. Moved in October. For the first two weeks I saw animals only at a great distance. The first to stop being afraid of me were local foxes and bears, then wolverines and sables. There were opportunities to film their interaction with each other. 
In the morning I often fried bacon and eggs or baked pancakes. This smell was narcotic to all the foxes in the area. They came close to the snow-covered kitchenette window and lustfully sucked in the fragrant jets. There were fights for the right to stand at the window and sniff. It was possible to shoot directly from the window.
But many species of animals do not trust humans. These have to be taken out of hiding. This is a special topic. 
- And what is its special character?
- For many thousands of years, a human hunter has been chasing wild animals in order to take their lives. And now the fear of the four-legged before the two-legged lives on an instinctive level. Animals in which the instinct of fear did not develop disappeared from the face of the planet.
Any photographer starting out with wildlife photography faces many challenges and frustrations. Any hare, duck or sandpiper tries not to let a person get closer than the distance of a gun shot, that is, 70 - 100 meters. Animals are too small in the picture, most often running away in mortal fear. 
To photograph the same duck or hare in full frame, even with a telephoto lens, you need to be three to five meters away from it. Unreal? If it were unrealistic, there would not be many wonderful photographs showing the most intimate moments in the life of animals. A well-arranged hideout is what can help you get closer to cautious animals and birds at any distance. 
- And what can serve as such a hiding place?
- Anything that can hide a person's figure and its movements can serve as a hiding place: a small tent, a hut, a pit, a large hollow, a blockage of trees, even a pile of brushwood - it all depends on the specific situation.
Skradok can be made from any local material familiar to animals: straw, hay, grass, branches, old boards. An excellent hiding place can be a hole dug in solid ground and lined around the perimeter with a turf parapet and covered on top with any available material: boards, tarpaulins, branches. In winter, in snowy places, it is good to build shelters from snow, like an Eskimo igloo. Sometimes it is enough to dig a hole in deep snow and cover it with an arch of snow plates. From such shelters I photographed Steller's sea eagles and swans, foxes and wolverines in Kamchatka. This is my favorite type of scraper. Snow bricks and plates have excellent heat and sound insulation. I've had to make skulks out of chainsaw-cut ice (for shooting otters), but they're not as comfortable as those made from snow. 
If you show your imagination, you can turn many familiar things into secrets. For example, a car. Animals quickly get used to a stationary car. A few years ago, I equipped a comfortable skradok on wheels - a military van based on the all-terrain vehicle GAZ - 66. From such a skradka I filmed black storks fishing in the Bryansk region, bison and deer in the Oryol Polesye national park, cautious saigas and belladonna cranes and birds of prey in steppes of Kalmykia. There was even a refrigerator in this hiding place, where a fair supply of beer and more was stored. 
Skradkom is even my big house in the Bryansk village of Chukhrai. A few years ago, I dragged a gnarled oak trunk from the cutting area, dug it in next to the house and installed a nesting platform for white storks on it. beautiful birds built a big nest on it. Now I can shoot birds at a very close distance from the attic of the house without disturbing them in any way.
But the most solid skulka will remain useless if you do not have the patience for long hours, sometimes days, to sit in it without moving. 
- I think the equipment is also part of your secrets.
- With the equipment I passed typical path people of my generation: Smena-8M, Zenit-E. In my student years, I managed to buy a Photo Sniper - who remembers - with a 300mm Tair-3 lens. In the early eighties, I worked as a forester with a salary of 75 rubles, and in order to buy my first Nikon, I had to start breeding bulls. Now in my arsenal Nikon D3 and Nikon D300. I have never had so much freedom as with these cameras that can tolerate the lifestyle I lead. They have marks not only from scuffs, falls, but even from the bites of curious cubs. 
"My goal is to show the beauty of the wild nature of Russian nature reserves and national parks and awaken people's desire to conserve these places." those areas." (Igor Shpilenok)
Igor Shpilenok was born on February 28, 1960, in the Trubchevsky district of the Bryansk region. He graduated from the Bryansk Pedagogical Institute, worked as a teacher in a school in the forest village of Novenkoye, then settled with his wife and two young sons in an abandoned forest cordon near the Nerussa River. He began to write (his favorite style of those years was letters to friends or diary entries).
Seriously engaged in photography of animals, studied the behavior of the "Red Book" black storks. With his active participation, the Bryansk Forest reserve was created, and Igor Shpilenok became the first director of this reserve.
Photographs wildlife (landscape photography) and wild animals. Author of photo books about wildlife. Member of the International League of Conservation Photographers.
In 2006 and 2009, Igor Shpilenok won the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in the Urban and Garden Wildlife category. Winner of the photo contest "Golden Turtle" in the nomination "Harmony of Life" in 2006 for the photo "Dawn on the Kronotskaya River"
Dawn on the Kronotskaya River He says about himself: “The idea to start taking pictures came to me at the age of 13, when in my wanderings through the spring Bryansk forest I discovered an amazing meadow with hundreds of snowdrops. It seemed unfair to me that only I, one of the several billion people living on earth, see this beauty.
... For two weeks I persuaded my grandmother to buy me a camera, but when I returned to the clearing with a brand new camera, I realized that I was late. Tall summer grass grew in place of the flowers. For a whole year I waited for the next spring and studied the technique of photography, spending all the material resources available to me on this. On April 25, 1974, I returned to the clearing and could not believe my eyes. In place of curtains of snowdrops, the soil turned black by the caterpillars of tractors turned black, piles of freshly cut wood piled up ...
... It was one of the strongest adolescent shocks that determined my future life. Since then, the camera has been my strongest ally in the work to save the Bryansk Forest - the place where I was born, live and hope to die. With the help of photography (by publishing articles in newspapers and magazines, organizing photo exhibitions), I found allies, with whom I achieved the organization of the Bryansk Forest Reserve and became its first director, having worked in this position for ten years ...
... During this time, my colleagues and I managed to create 12 more protected natural areas in the Bryansk Forest, where logging, land reclamation and other destructive economic activities are prohibited. Now almost 20 percent of the Bryansk forest has been removed from economic use, and its central part has been declared an international biosphere reserve under the auspices of UNESCO. Years heal the wounds inflicted by people on the Bryansk forest, and hundreds of snowdrops are blooming in my clearing again - now they are not in danger.
In the second half of my life, when I was pretty tired of the bureaucratic side managerial work I decided to completely surrender to photography. Now I have a dream job: to convey the beauty of wildlife to people, to wake them up for environmental initiatives, being myself in the thick of environmental events. I dreamed that the geography of my photo expeditions would expand to the whole protected Russia.
So it was until I discovered the Kronotsky nature reserve in Kamchatka and fell in love with this harsh land. Now I have a second homeland, and I am torn between the Bryansk Forest and Kamchatka, between which a country the size of nine time zones fits!
I am a happy father of four sons: Tikhon, Peter, Andrey and Makar. Tikhon and Petya continue the work of my life with their routes. The two younger ones are still dreaming about it. I am a happy husband. I am connected with my wife Laura not only by love, but also by common life values. She was born and raised in the USA, but she lives in Russia for eleven months of the year.
Like me, she has been a conservationist all her adult life. In addition, she manages to write her own books and translate mine. I owe all my victories at international and Russian photo contests to Laura: it is she who selects and sends the pictures.”
Igor Shpilenok currently lives in the village of Chukhrai, which is located in the very nature reserve "Bryansk Forest", sometimes leaving his native places, which he talks about in his blog on LiveJournal, about the places where he is. and also talks in detail about the nature of the animals he photographs. In 2012, Igor's blog received the "Rynda of the Year" award in the "Image of the Year" nomination.
He returned home from the Arkhangelsk taiga. I visited two remote places: on the White Sea in the national park "Onega Pomorye" and in the interfluve of the Northern Dvina and Pinega in the eastern part of the region. I’ll tell you about the “Onega Pomorye” a little later, and today I’ll tell you about a trip to the Dvina-Pinezhsky taiga massif, which was not quite usual, since my usual photo trips take place in nature reserves and national parks of our country, against the backdrop of protected nature, which already has a protective conservation status, there is a future. Immediately I got to the remote front, about which people know little, but guess more.
I also guessed that the remnants of the pristine taiga in the North-West of our country were being exterminated, but I did not think that it was so fast and on such a scale that was revealed to me during this expedition. Before this trip, I hoped that the conservationists had a margin of time, and mother nature had secluded roadless places where the remains of the relic taiga could remain untouched for many, many more years. Now I know that we have neither a reserve of time, nor roadless "Berendeev thickets". There is an unprecedented extermination of the northern taiga in history, based on the most modern technologies.
In the interfluve of the Northern Dvina and Pinega, Europe's largest massif of untouched reference taiga has survived to this day. More recently, its area was about a million hectares. 18 salmon spawning rivers originate or flow here, the purity of which determines the state of the entire salmon population - Atlantic salmon. Interfluve forests are one of the last refuges for wild reindeer. whose population in the region is on the verge of extinction as a result of habitat destruction and poaching. The entire territory of the Dvinsko-Pinezhsky forest area is leased from large loggers; this is a resource for enterprises in the region's forestry sector. Large forest tenants (this is a group of companies "Titan" and JSC "Arkhangelsk Pulp and Paper Mill" have considerable influence in the region. They declare their "environmental friendliness" and even voluntarily certified according to what for Russian companies is a "green pass" to foreign environmentally sensitive markets.Nevertheless, the development of forests is on an extensive path. High-quality reforestation is not carried out in the cut down areas, birches and aspens grow on the site of relic coniferous forests, and timber merchants continue their movement deep into the pristine northern taiga, as if it is endless. Having destroyed it completely, which will happen very soon, the timber merchants will be forced to change their approaches to business, but we will no longer have the pristine taiga.
Off-road for centuries saved the northern taiga from intensive economic use. Newly built roads lead not to settlements, but to tracts of uncut forests.
Concrete slabs were laid on clay areas, as well as on steep descents and ascents. The forestry sector of the region spends huge amounts of money not on high-quality reforestation in cut areas, but on the preservation and development of the old, extensive system of forest management, on the construction of new and new roads to the last tracts of intact forests, and on expanding the volume of felling. 
Since the transport distance from remote areas to processing sites is usually hundreds of kilometers, even powerful timber trucks, if there are good roads, cannot cope with hauling. Along the roads, you can see piles of wood in many tens of thousands of cubic meters. Here you clearly understand the scale of deforestation.
This is how the Arkhangelsk taiga looks now from a bird's eye view. Cutout rectangles. Each individual plot can reach fifty hectares. Soon, the lumberjacks will "master" the surviving rectangles and lose interest in the devastated places for a long time.
Trees in the north grow slowly and do not reach gigantic sizes. These fir trees may be well over a hundred years old.
Shift camp of loggers. Organizers of the forest business present themselves as benefactors of the local population. In reality, however, a colonial scheme is visible, when the main beneficiaries live in the capitals, or even in prosperous countries, and after such forest management, the local residents are left with devastated taiga and poverty. New technologies for deforestation require a minimum of people. The Siberian barber worked on by the crazy foreign inventor in Mikhalkov's film of the same name has been around for a long time and is destroying forests all over the world with frightening efficiency. Only one complex, consisting of two machines with the English names harvester and forwarder, can replace more than fifty people working in logging using traditional technology. Freight "Mercedes" and "Volvo" are working on the haulage, carrying round timber right along the wagon. Now Russia is firmly among the top three leading countries in terms of the extent of extermination of primeval forests, and the Arkhangelsk region is the leader in the extermination of such forests in Russia.
At the beginning of this century, when it became clear what trouble was hanging over the northern taiga, environmental organizations, scientists, and the public began work on creating a regional landscape reserve between the Northern Dvina and Pinega rivers, which would save at least part of the relic taiga from mass cutting. The regime of the reserve will allow the local population to continue their traditional nature management - hunting, fishing, picking mushrooms and berries, but clear-cutting will be prohibited. Several scientific expeditions were organized to survey the territory, difficult negotiations began with the timber merchants and the authorities. The creation of the reserve was repeatedly postponed, and its area was reduced, information wars were waged against its creation.In 2013, the project of the reserve with an area of almost 500,000 hectares was approved by the state expertise. In 2017, the governor of the Arkhangelsk region confirmed that there will be a reserve. In 2018, an agreement was reached with tenants on the boundaries of the reserve and its area, according to this document, it will be 300 thousand hectares. The tenants tried to push the territory of the reserve away from their areas of interest, so the configuration of its borders turned out to be far from ideal. According to the plan approved by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Timber Industry of the Arkhangelsk Region, the reserve should be created in early 2019, but there is still no document on its creation. This is worrisome...
The Arkhangelsk branch of WWF Russia, having learned about the project of photographing the primeval forests of Russia, invited me to another expedition to survey the territory of the future reserve. The expedition began in the Pinega village of Kushkopala, which is located about three hundred kilometers from Arkhangelsk, then we drove a hundred kilometers in cars along new logging roads among endless clearings to the middle reaches of the Yula River. It was on these hundred kilometers that footage of the destruction of the Arkhangelsk taiga was filmed.
Then we went up in motor wooden boats up the river. Yula is not the most abundant river. On the rifts, everyone had to get out of the boats and work as barge haulers. Therefore, we climbed slowly, about 70 kilometers in two days. Our guides were local hunters, whose lands were close to massive clearings.
The bend of the Yula River from a bird's eye view. Relic spruce forests stretch for tens of kilometers. This is the middle part of the future reserve.
Lobaria lichen, an indicator of the ecological cleanliness of the area.
Environmental organizations and the local population are allies in the fight for the reserve. In the photo, a professional hunter from the village of Kushkopala, Pinezhsky District, Viktor Khudyakov (left), who participated in the creation of the reserve from the very beginning, his lands are located on the territory of the future reserve, and Andrey Shchegolev, director of the WWF Russia Forest Program (right).
Along the rivers flowing through the future reserve, there are about fifty such forest huts, in which local hunters and fishermen, as well as vacationers, stop. Two-thirds of men from neighboring settlements cannot imagine their life without regular exposure to nature. Many of them have lost their hunting and fishing grounds and places of rest due to massive felling.
Yula in the middle reaches.
Primordial, not knowing the ax taiga.
The confluence of the Yula and Ura rivers in the central part of the future reserve.
The boundless expanses of wild untouched nature are turning into a myth before our eyes. A soulless chistogan-based system robs the locals of a sustainable future; takes home, habitat from our wild neighbors on the planet, impoverishes biological diversity. We are surprised by the climatic cataclysms of recent years. Coniferous northern forests are of great importance for climate stabilization, it is a kind of "coat of the earth" that restrains the flow of cold arctic air masses deep into the mainland, retains and redistributes moisture. These are important arguments in favor of preserving at least a part of intact and pristine forest areas, including the creation of the Dvinsko-Pinezhsky landscape reserve.
