Destination Wedding and Elopement Photographer

I was born and raised in a small town in Russia. I always wanted to have a creative career, so after graduating from high school, I moved to a much bigger city, Samara, to study Architecture and Civil Engineering. By this time I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I was sure that it would somehow be related to art. After a year of studying at University, I bought my very first camera. More about how I fell in love with photography is written in the post here.

I met my soulmate, my best friend, and my husband when I was studying in my second year at University. Since then we have rarely been apart. In 2014 we got married in Santorini, the most romantic of the Greek islands.

We started traveling around the world for short trips and eventually realized that we felt the happiest when we were on the road exploring new countries and cultures.

I graduated in 2014 with a BA in Architecture and Civil Engineering and we flew to Australia and stayed there for 3 months. It was our first long trip away from home and we loved it so much that after returning to Russia we immediately started planning our next trip.

Since then we lived a nomadic life visiting and living in 52 countries so far. I would always take a lot of photos during every trip, meet a lot of inspiring people, and have amazing photoshoots in different corners of the world. By the way, visit my Travel Blog yanayart.com

In August 2020 we moved to Portugal, right in the middle of the pandemic. We decided to settle down and it was a big change for us. Everything worked smoothly, and we adapted to a new lifestyle really fast. I feel extremely lucky that we can call this beautiful country our home.