Hi All,
I know this has been awhile coming, but here is my delayed introduction post! I've been using steem for nearly 3 weeks now and I'm really enjoying the community... anyway, to the intro!
I’m Paul Pichugin. I’m a dad to 3 awesome daughters, fortunate husband to the best wife anyone could ask for, proud brother to a sister who is doing amazing things, and a son to some pretty incredible parents. I also take photos for a living.
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I’ve been fortunate enough to work on travel and landscape photography projects in every state in Australia, 17 countries and Antarctica in the last few years. I absolutely love what I do, I often have to pinch myself and remind myself that this isn’t a dream!
Some of the experiences I’ve had include kayaking and snorkelling in Antarctica, night kayaking amongst the bio-luminescence in Tasmania and hiking through blizzards in the Tasmanian mountains, aerial photography in Queensland, Dubai and all over Western Australia to camping all through Iceland & Norway and with Bedouin in Jordan, riding horses around the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
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I come from a pretty mixed background, my Dad's family arrived in Australia in the 1950s as refugees from China, they are Russians who escaped from Russia into China during the Russian revolution. My mum's family is the classic Australian "bitsa", as in we have a bit of everything thrown in there, including Australian Aboriginal, my great-grandmother was Australian Aboriginal, I think it is pretty cool to have that connection. I was born in Adelaide in South Australia and we moved around quite a bit as Dad was in the Australian military... so I grew up in Sydney and Brisbane, worked and lived in Melbourne and Canberra for a time before moving to Perth and then finally to Busselton (2.5 hours drive south of Perth) in Western Australia. We've been in Busselton for over 6 years now and we absolutely love it, it is home to us and we're part of an incredible community of people here.
Photography started out as a hobby and then a form of "escape" from the stress of my previous career in the IT industry, where I did everything from help desk to programming to systems administration before eventually moving into Project Management for large IT Infrastructure projects. I started photographing weddings on the side about 15 years ago and then when the GFC hit in 2008 and I was made redundant from my role, I decided to go full time into my photography. Initially I focused on weddings, I photographed weddings all over Australia and a few overseas before getting burned out and remembering that I actually got into photography to be outdoors and enjoying the landscapes of the world. Close to 400 weddings later I have stopped photographing them nearly completely, only taking on the occasional wedding if the location is appealing and I think I can do something fresh and different.
I photographed my first few travel campaigns in 2011 and then ramped things up in 2014, since then I've worked on campaigns and projects in 17 countries, every state in Australia as well as a project in Antarctica. I love the outdoors and working on travel and tourism campaigns in particular. I've worked with National Geographic, Conde Nast, Qantas, Jetstar, Tourism Australia, Tourism Western Australia, Tourism Tasmania, Tourism Dubai, American Express, Google, Samsung, Oppo and many other top companies in the world.
Recently I was admitted into the Australian Society of Travel Writers and I'm working on combining my photography and video with travel writing. I'm using Steem as an outlet to practice writing more.
Aside from the commercial work I do, I also am passionate about working with NGOs (non-government organisations) and people I call "Change Makers" in developing nations. That has taken me to some pretty incredible locations and I've seen some of the best and worst of humanity in the process. I'm passionate about documenting the work of the change makers and NGOs, helping them raise awareness and funding for their projects. Further to this I work with an organisation called The Giving Lens, we take groups of photographers on tours / workshops through developing countries, we also volunteer with a local NGO and at the end of the trip the profits are donated to the NGO.
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Hope you found some of that interesting, remember you can click on the photos to view them larger if you want to as well. Feel free to ask any questions, I'll see if I can answer them.
Visit my website for more: paulmp.com
Prints are available on Redbubble: Paulmp on Redbubble
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All photos posted are copyright Paul Pichugin unless otherwise stated.