I'm Irina Petrova, an internationally published and award-winning photographer and artist. I specialize in wildlife micro-photography and science fiction inspired installations organically integrating living and artificial entities. A unique feature of my work is I prefer to use retro manual focus lenses to share the wonders of the world. I won a substantial number of awards and prizes, including BIFA 2021 in science category, winner of FEP Awards 2021 Nature Golden Camera and ND Discovery of the Year in category Nature 2019.

I can’t say that I fell in love with photography from the first sight. In the beginning I used a camera for my blog to take clear shots of insects. I found my passion for photography only after buying old soviet manual focus lenses MC Jupiter-37A and Zenitar-M. I saw the world from a very different artistic point of view. The first thing is that I love that each vintage lens has its own signature and the fact that lots of the greatest photographers of the past have used the same kind of lenses to take shots like I use today.

I'm a self-taught photographer.

My first shot was made in a store, where I bought my camera. It was just a test shot to check out if my first camera was working.

I use Sony ILCE-7RM4 and Sony Alpha NEX-6 with a various amount of a manual focus lenses, mostly retro. I also have some speedlights from Godox, because I'm fond of artificial light.

I hope to achieve the level of skill of the legendary photographers of the past, who did not have the same opportunities as modern photographers, but they still managed to work wonders in limited conditions.

Once the director of Russian department of Wikipedia said, that my photographs work for benefit of humanity providing knowledge of invisible world 24/7. That was incredibly inspiring, touching and moving.

I'm a huge sci-fi fan, so my greatest inspiration is sci-fi books and movies. I also love modern art. So sometimes I use it as my inspiration. But I truly believe that world is an inspiration by itself, even simple fountain water can look like the milky way or a weird shaped alien.

Sharp, colorful, unconventional.

This award holds a special place in my life, I'm so honored to get it. It's proof to myself that my work is worthy and it's needed by the public. This award is the greatest inspiration to work harder and create more photos. Photography changes people's life, it has definitely changed mine, like this award.

My project “Microcosmic Portraits Of The Little Earthlings” is a series of macro portraits of insects taken with two retro manual focus lenses, manufactured in 1982, connected by a filter ring adapter.

Each image was made by the focus stacking of a few tens or hundreds of shots. The purpose of this project was to show common insects from an unexpected perspective. That is why all insects were from my native South Ural, the place no one would expect to find exotic, bright species.

It made my photos more recognizable in the photographic world, so I decided to make a photo book based on my winning series. I called it "Juxtaposition". It's on sale on Amazon now. The atlas uncovers unique and intrinsic features of the critters and plants. Unorthodox color images through the artist's eyes. "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it" (Confucius). The art of microphotography allows us to re-think and to re-see morphological patterns of insects, flowers and arachnids.

Dora Maar, Peter Lippmann, Levon Biss.

Go manual. It helps a lot. Use artificial light.

Believe in yourself and in what you do, be honest to yourself, your audience, because people feel the fake ideas in art, they can’t resonate with something you don’t believe in yourself. Never stop dreaming and creating.

I think, work hard is the only key to success.

To be passionate in what you do helps a lot.