Daniel Kordan

Daniel Kordan

Daniel Kordan is a landscape and travel photographer from Russia. Partner in Iceland photo tours company, the largest photo tour company in the world. Owner of Instagram account @Danielkordan with 1,5 million followers. Nikon, Gitzo and Skylum global ambassadors. Daniel spends 10 months per year travelling the world, capturing breathtaking landscapes.
Russian winter
Daniel Kordan was born in a small town about 120 km from Moscow, a wonderful region with lakes, forests and unspoiled nature. For that reason, many of his most memorable experiences have centred on nature.

As a child, Daniel was so eager to experience nature, that he often wandered around before sunrise to experience beautiful foggy lakes, and during winters he enjoyed seeing trees covered with enchanting hoarfrost.
In his early years, Kordan attended art school for six years. During that time, he learnt painting techniques, which undoubtedly extended his understanding of beautiful compositions and harmonious colour palettes. He also learned that finding and presenting unique moments depends on much more than pure technique. For instance: understanding the value of intuition is a central key to achieving unique results.

Mongolia Nomads

Daniel spends 9-10 months each year travelling the world, sometimes staying in one place for a week and other times 1 or 2 months. Daniel describes his continuous travelling as “Living the World” and being a “World Citizen” Currently, he is working on two long-term projects. One of these is a yachting expedition called: “Two poles”. travelling from Saint-Petersburg to Antarctica, through Svalbard and Greenland, along with one-week workshops.

Kordan’s photography career started with painting, and then he applied his scientific skills that later developed into photography. Building a great landscape portfolio has also taken many years. It’s not something you finish in a matter of months; it takes years of hard work. During his first years building a portfolio, he was not recognised as a photographer due to a lack of experience and little or no feedback on his work. He was not commissioned and was solely working for himself. After spending 7 – 8 years of my career, just forming skills and a portfolio, the hard work started to pay off (with licenses, print requests and plenty of returning customers on his photography workshop tours). He became widely recognised and, from there began to make it a livelihood.

Daniel still feels that he has a lot of areas to explore. and dreams a lot about upcoming adventures studying the world map with great excitement, knowing there are always fascinating things to experience when visiting new destinations. For example, Kordan reflects on an astonishing astrophotography trip in Bolivia and Chile, where he visited wonderful locations for a mind-blowing night photography experience.

Also another tough expedition to Antarctica and the Arctic by a yacht that made Kordan feel like a real adventurer while travelling through unexplored places that he describes as exciting and fascinating.