Hi, I'm Elmar — a nature, wildlife and landscape photographer based in Australia, though my love for wild places goes back further, to where I grew up in Kazakhstan.

Most mornings that matter to me start before sunrise, in the damp, quiet understorey of the Dandenong Ranges National Park. I've spent years there, waiting for lyrebirds — birds that are famously shy, extraordinary mimics, and very good at disappearing the moment you raise a camera. Getting close enough, patiently enough, for long enough, has taught me most of what I know about stillness and timing. It's slow, often frustrating work, and I genuinely love it.

That patience has paid off in ways I'm grateful for. Over the years, my time with the lyrebirds of the Dandenongs has been recognised by BirdLife Australia — as I was selected as the Portfolio Winner in 2022.

Landscapes are the other half of what I do, and where I actually started — photographing Kazakhstan's mountains and steppe for a project that became a book, one that the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs went on to share with its diplomatic missions abroad. That instinct never left me, and it's grown into an ongoing project of mine, "World Is an Addiction," now spanning several continents. It's brought its own quiet recognition too, including third place in the Landscape Series category at the MonoVisions Awards.

I don't photograph to win things. If anything, the lyrebirds are a good reminder that most of this work happens with no audience and no guarantee of a result. But if one of these photographs ends up on your wall, I hope it carries a little of that — a wild place, doing what it's always done, long before either of us arrived.

My story