An Anti-Balaka fighter, member of a militia opposed to the Seleka rebel group, puts a knife to his throat showing what he would do to any Seleka, on the outskirts of the Boy-Rabe neighborhood in Bangui on December 14, 2013. France raised alarm on December 13 over worsening violence in the Central African Republic, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged warring Christians and Muslims to stop the bloodshed that has left more than 600 dead in the past week. (Photo by Ivan Lieman/AFP Photo)

Patients from Rady Children's Hospital hug a bottlenose dolphin after being invited to swim and interact with dolphins at Sea World in San Diego, California August 27, 2015. Sea World has hosted Dolphin Interaction Program for seven years. It was started by dolphin trainer Joy Soto who battled and overcame non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

I'm born in Russia in a village on the coast of the Sea of ​​Japan. The sea itself that always catches the attention of divers and underwater photographers from all over the Soviet Union.

I started with underwater photography recently, in 1998, with a simple underwater "boom box" "Canon" and "Epic".
Then a "Nikonos-5", complete with wide-angle and close-up.
The first trip to the Red Sea, with colorful fish .. The first attempts to make the macro and the knowledge that this equipment was not good.

After some days with temperatures below freezing point, I was out skating at some lakes at the outskirts of Oslo in Norway. After a while I noticed something on the ice. To my astonishment it was a dead frozen frog.

Stemonitis axifera is a species of slime mold. It fruits in clusters on dead wood, and has distinctive tall reddish-brown sporangia, supported on slender stalks. The species was first described as Trichia axifera by Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard in 1791. Thomas Huston MacBride transferred it to the genus Stemonitis in 1889. Stemonitis fasciculata and Stemonitis smithii are synonyms.

Model, skydiver and wing-suit jumper Roberta Mancino, 33, swims with a whale shark on February 2014 in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. A female skydiver swims with whale sharks, manta rays and sailfish – the fastest fish in the sea. Model, skydiver and wing-suit jumper Roberta Mancino, 33, jumped from a boat into the ocean surrounding Isla Mujeres near the northern Peninsula of Mexico. The incredible project involved two trips to the stormy winter seas – one in February 2013 and one a year later in February 2014. (Photo by Shawn Heinrichs/Barcroft Media)

Indonesian air force personnel carry the flight data recorder of the ill-fated AirAsia Flight 8501 that crashed in the Java Sea, at airport in Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia, Monday, January 12, 2015. Divers retrieved one black box Monday and located the other from the AirAsia plane that crashed more than two weeks ago, a key development that should help investigators unravel what caused the aircraft to plummet into the Java Sea. (Photo by Achmad Ibrahim/AP Photo)

An eight-week-old sea otter rescued from Seldovia, Alaska, peaks out of his enclosure at Shedd Aquarium Wednesday, December 6, 2023, in Chicago. The otter was found alone and malnourished and was taken to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, Alaska, which contacted Shedd, and the Chicago aquarium was able to take the otter in. He will remain quarantined for a few months while he learns to groom and eat solid foods before being introduced to Shedd's five other sea otters. (Photo by Erin Hooley/AP Photo)