So, I’m Slava Potalakh and I’m a portrait photographer.

I was born in 1982 in Minsk. I’ve been into photography since I was 20, when I dropped out of college (I was studying fashion design) and realized that my true calling was photography. What really struck me back then were the images I saw in glossy magazines during that time of information scarcity, beauty, fashion, and luxury (the late 90s and early 2000s). 

Over the years, I took some courses, attended and organized workshops, but mostly I’m self-taught—through magazines, books, the internet, YouTube, and tons of practice. Because photography, after all, is a hands-on craft. I studied at Valery Lobko’s course in 2004–2005 at the Academy of Arts, and also took a year-long course with Yegor Voynov in 2012–2013. 

For several years, I worked with Belarusian and international magazines, shooting everything from little jars of cosmetics to covers and special projects. But what I loved most was photographing people for interviews. I’m truly grateful for that time and the experience I gained. For about 15 years, I was deeply into wedding photography—back then it was pretty much the only viable commercial niche. 

Now I consciously don’t shoot weddings anymore (I feel I’ve done everything I could in that field). My true love is portrait photography, because it’s where creativity meets flexibility, self-expression, and that wonderful energy you get back from your subjects. Over this time, I’ve done thousands of shoots across many genres: business portraits, family sessions, commercial, individual, corporate, street-style, model tests, portfolios, magazine covers, and more. What unites all these genres is that I find every single one of them interesting, and I put my hands and a piece of myself into each shoot. 

Nowadays, I often work in a team with stylists and makeup artists, use tons of lighting, and shoot a little bit of video on the side. Over the course of my career, I’ve traveled to many countries, mostly for work and shoots: Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, the UAE, Greece, Hungary, Cyprus, and more. Just lying at a hotel sipping cocktails bores me, so I prefer active holidays—or even better, active shoots.))) 

I shoot a lot of reportage as well. I’m a huge fan of classical music, I’ve worked with many performers at concerts, shot sports events, corporate parties, presentations, gala concerts, film and music video backstages, birthdays, social events, and business functions. I also have teaching experience. 

I love my profession and enjoy sharing my knowledge both online and offline. For several years, I taught photographic posing at modeling schools. I have my own training system, and I often use that knowledge not only with professional models but also with everyday people. So that turned out to be not such a short post after all.