Educated as an Artist, I'm in love
with photography all my life.
Hope you can feel it.

biography
publications

mike reyfman

I was born in Ukraine in 1961.
My childhood memories are filled with good family times, warm Ukrainian summers, and great books. I am gifted, as most of us are, with selective memory that sorts the good from the bad, fading the latter into the "I don't remember that" category.
I was happy.

Photography entered my life late, at the age of twenty-four, with a toyish, 1936 Kodak Retina. Brought by my grandpa as a trophy in 1945 from World War II, I found the camera in the attic some 40 years later in perfect working condition! I always felt reverential trembling for my father’s huge "wooden" boxes — dad was professional photographer — but this small, folding rangefinder was not frightening at all.
Photography wasn’t in my plans for the future. But I had a wonderful teacher right at home: my dad. He took my interest very seriously and helped me get started. Within several days, I was mixing chemicals, developing film, making silver prints. It was magic, simply magic.
I was happy.

It was a time of big changes in post-soviet space, a time of big changes and big opportunities. Holding degrees in Fine Art Painting and Architecture and having a passion for photography, I went in the opposite direction and dove, for 12 years, into erratic but promising post-soviet business. Having started almost from a private basement, our printing company had grown to one of the biggest privately owned printing-houses in the country.  Business was big and successful, with hundreds of employees, big clients, high-end equipment and international awards.
I was happy.

We believed in the young Ukrainian democracy and became a main publishing support for the pre-election campaign of one of the Ukrainian Presidential candidates. Democracy proved to be too young with a loud bone crash.
I was…

I immigrated to the United States with my wife Margarita and my daughter Izabella in January 2000, and we started our new life. It a wasn’t political emigration or exile after all. We were allowed to stay. We just got tired of everything and wanted changes. We got it.
I’m happy.

I’m back to my Art and Photography now.  I sell Fine Art prints and stock images, shoot products for advertising, and go on assignment for clients. My passion is landscape and nature photography, and I travel a lot. I run photo-travel workshops several times a year and they usually sell out in a couple of days. I’m in demand as an author for most of the big Russian photography and travel magazines, and I’m getting a positive response from readers.
I’m happy.
I’m trying to share it with you through my pictures…

publications

How to Shoot a Perfect Postcard.
DigitalPhoto Magazine
March 2008
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Hottest, Driest, Lowest. Death Valley.
PhotoDelo Magazine
July 2007
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Treasures of the Southwest.
PhotoDelo Magazine
May 2007
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Sparks of Chicago.
PhotoDelo Magazine
February 2007
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Buenos Aires.
Christmas in the Argentum Country.
IGNAT Magazine
Fall 2006/Winter 2007
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Windy City. Chicago.
IGNAT Magazine
Spring/Summer 2006
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Maple Leaf. Canada.
IGNAT Magazine
Fall 2005
>>>