Photographer: Vitaly Tyuk Website: http://panvelvet.com Location: Russia 🖼"My name is Vitaly Tyuk, a.k.a. Panvelvet and I am a Russian freelance director/video editor and part-time photographer. In regular times my base would be Shanghai, China, but due to the pandemic, I'm stuck in Russia since February, and so now I'm creating from here 🙂. Joking. 🙂" ❓ Who or what influenced you as a photographer the most at the beginning of your journey? 🗣 Probably social media, in general, influenced me as a photographer the most. No one in particular. I was watching a lot of eye-pleasing content. ❓How did you start your professional career? 🗣 In photography, I came through videography seven years ago (it was an easy transition for me). When it was popular to hang out on instameets in Shanghai, plus all cameras I had at that time, besides shooting video, could also take stills. From here, I just started trying everything. ❓ What software and hardware do you use, and why? 🗣 I have a different workflow for a different software. It all comes down to my needs. When I just need to color images, I use Lightroom, but I also use Photoshop for manipulations, from little tweaks to heavy collaging. And for hardware, since I'm a video editor in the first place, I have very powerful custom-built iMac and MacBook Pro for work (for example, for Avid, Davinci, AE, Blender). ❓ What does photography mean to you, and what motivates you? 🗣 Photography is my escape from anything video related, and the list of some crazy ideas that I have for photography is what motivates me. ❓What was your most challenging project, and why? 🗣 Talking about the most challenging project, I can't think of one because most of my projects are challenging. I personally enjoy doing challenging stuff. For example, I can mention 24HRS, its video with roof toppers climbing skyscrapers in Shanghai. It was very challenging to shoot and very dangerous to do without safety equipment. ❓What was the most important skill that you learned, and how does it help you now? 🗣 Without a doubt, creativity is my most important skill I've learned so far, and it helps me all the time in everything, not just particularly at work. ❓What is your dream project you're starving to try in the next 10 years? 🗣 Talking about dream projects, probably the most I want to direct feature films. Maybe one day I'll come to that. ❓ Can you tell us about a personal or professional project you are proud of? 🗣 For example, I could mention "not small HK island" artwork, which I'm proud of. It won a few 1st place awards. It is an inverted 360 drone photo made out of 43 images. ❓ Do you have any passion projects you're working on or plan to start? 🗣 I'm always working on something. I have a few passion projects at the moment, like a documentary, another short movie and some other stuff. ❓If you had just one question about anything that you could ask and get an answer, what would it be? 🗣 When is the pandemic over? 🙂 That's the main question I have at the moment without jokes 🙂