Welcome to Ilko Allexandroff Photography!

I am originally from Bulgaria, but I am based in Kobe, Japan where I started and got in love with photography! Here I’m mainly doing portrait, fashion and wedding photography, but I love challenges so I’m eager to try new things all the time! One of the main thing I’m trying to, and I enjoy doing is to be creative with using light, so I’m spending most of my time trying research how light works in different situations!

Feel free to check my Blog, where I’m explaining in detail my use of light and equipment, showing my lighting setups for many of the photos uploaded, take a peek at my portfolio, subscribe to my Facebook Page or just send my a message with the buttons below! I would be happy to hear from you!

Shooting for yourself & shooting for others

Being a photographer these days is so easy, so easy that it’s becoming so difficult to stand out from the enormous mass of people who want to be photographers! It is very important to have a clear vision of what you want to shoot, and how you want to shoot it, not just go out and do what the others do! That’s why shooting for yourself is really important, it is where you develop as photographer, you learn how to deal with different problems and how to be creative! On the other side, shooting for the others is what actually pays the bills, so it is very important to find that balance which can help you grow as a photographer, but will also be enough for you to have a living!

I actually purchased my first DSLR camera, thinking that if I get a big good camera, I’m gonna take the hell good photos… big mistake, and it took me a while to realize that it requires much more than a good expensive camera to be able to take good photos! Since that one of my first principle that I try to never break is:

To never buy equipment that you don’t know why you need it for! And even if you pretty much know why you need that piece of gear, just wait a few months more, so you become more creative in dealing without it!

Camera is just a tool, don’t be its slave! After I got my first camera and a few lenses, I actually had to send them all a few months later, and then I purchased only one small cheap prime lens, the 50mm, and spend almost half year only with it, to realize that limiting yourself is one of the things that can help you be a better photographer!

To be honest, I didn’t come to Japan trying to be a photographer, I came here to study Human Resource Management, where I happened to “meet” my first camera just by chance, and after I was about to graduate searching for a job in my field, I asked myself, is that what I really want to do, there I decided to do my best and put all my efforts in photography!

Know your subject

The best way to do good photography is to really know your subject, and not just that, if you love your subject then you are really going to get some good results!

Shoot what you love, and love what you shoot!

Yeah, subject is what stands out in your photo, it is what the viewers see! And the last thing, that I guess I don’t even need to mention is to enjoy! If you enjoy, if you are happy with what you are doing, and all the people around you are going to feel that energy, friends, models, staff at the photoshoot, vendors! Do it with fun!

***