Photography became my way of self-expression

Recognition

Awards and publications

Photographs by Dmitry Rogozhkin have been shown in international competitions and curated collections.

Workshops

Master classes and seminars

Dmitry runs master classes and seminars across Russia and the CIS countries, and travels abroad when an organiser invites him. Cities he has worked in include St. Petersburg, The Hague, Sochi, Sevastopol, Moscow, Minsk and Kiev.

Somewhere along the way, photography became for me a more convenient way of self-expression than drawing or painting. The shift was gradual, but it felt natural: a camera in hand, a subject in front of the lens, and the quiet satisfaction of catching light exactly as it fell. Drawing and painting remain part of how I see the world, and they still shape the way I compose a frame, but the camera gave my artistic mind a faster rhythm, one that suited the way I actually think.

I grew up in a small town called Malmyzh, and that modest beginning still informs everything I photograph. The streets I walked as a child, the weathered walls, the honest, ordinary light of a provincial town — all of it lives in the way I look for a scene. I like images that feel lived-in rather than staged, pictures with a little patience in them, taken with time to observe rather than to arrange.

Artistic education came early, and it set the direction of everything that followed. Always having liked to draw, I eventually helped my way into enrolling at a university of architecture, where I trained myself to think in space, proportion, and structure. Those lessons translate directly into photographic work: framing a building, a portrait, or a fragment of a street is really an exercise in architecture, in arranging shapes until they hold together.

My first real camera was a Canon PowerShot 20x, bought in 2011 for a modest sum of money. It was not a serious instrument, but it was the beginning of something. I photographed with it steadily for about a year, learning the basics by trial and error, and then I set it aside for a while. Even so, those early frames carried a lot of weight — they were the first proof that this could be a practice, not merely a passing hobby.

From those early days I have kept learning, and eventually I began teaching. What started as sharing small tips with other photographers grew into workshops, tutorials, and master classes. Teaching feels like a natural extension of the work itself: I enjoy showing people how to slow down, to notice light, to work deliberately with their gear instead of simply firing off frames. The feedback loop of a workshop sharpens my own eye as much as it sharpens theirs.

Over time the portfolio grew, and with it recognition beyond my own circle. Being listed among award-nominated photographers and finding my way into a top ranking for fine art photography was not something I chased for its own sake — it was simply a sign that the images were landing with viewers. The important thing remains the same: each photograph should hold an atmosphere, a mood, a fragment of light that feels worth keeping.

Most of what I photograph falls into a few recurring directions: portraits, landscape, and the small, quiet details of everyday life. Portraits interest me most, because a face carries a whole interior world. Landscape work draws me to wide, open spaces and the way distance softens color. Detail photography, by contrast, is about intimacy — the texture of a wall, the geometry of a doorway, the character of an ordinary object.

This site is where that body of work lives. The portfolio gathers photographs from many years, spanning different subjects and different seasons, and it is arranged to be walked through slowly rather than scrolled quickly. Alongside the images there are notes on process and technique, because I believe understanding how an image was made deepens the pleasure of looking at it. Workshops and tutorials are available for those who want to go further.

For anyone picking up a camera for the first time, my advice is simple and unglamorous: start with what you have, and shoot every day. The technical knowledge matters, but it arrives faster than instinct does. Draw what you see, study the light, look at a great deal of photography, and keep a record of your own progress. A social network of fellow photographers helps enormously, and so does patience. Serious results accumulate slowly, one frame at a time.