Viktor Lyagushkin – National Geographic photographer,
Nikon Ambassador (2013-2023), Subal Pro Team member, head of the PHOTOTEAM.PRO, winner of international photo contests. Viktor was born in Moscow to a family of military men and spent his childhood and school time in Czechoslovakia. Then he returned to Moscow, after school he graduated from the St. Petersburg Theatre Academy as an artist-decorator. He worked in magazines as a layout person, designer, and art director. A professional photographer since 1998. In 2003, Viktor took an underwater camera, and soon, underwater shooting became his main hobby and favorite work.
Author of the book Orda Cave. Awareness Project, Being a Dolphin, 100 Facts About Dolphins, laureate of the National Underwater World Prize. His solo exhibitions have been successfully exhibited all over the world. Viktor is the main organizer for the PHOTOTEAM.PRO, generator of ideas, energy, and, of course, a photographer.
Bogdana Vashchenko,
Writer, National Geographic Explorer, Creator of Cybernetic Alchemy
Bogdana SnowKitty’s reportage blends scientific precision with mythopoetic charge. Her style is defined by immersive physicality, ethnographic attentiveness, sensory detail, lyrical detours, and firm scientific grounding. Editors often describe her work as scientific fieldwork written by a poet.
Her core gift is the ability to make readers feel an environment before they intellectually grasp it. She writes in a dual register — the tangible world and the metaphor beneath it — transforming field observations into emotionally resonant narratives that reveal why ecosystems matter.
A hallmark of her storytelling is the use of “riverstones”: small details introduced quietly (a rusted hook, a drifting bottle, a childhood memory) and returned to later with symbolic weight. Characters emerge not as isolated figures but as parts of ecological feedback loops, their choices echoing through species, histories, and myths.
The result is reportage that is visually vivid, structurally precise, emotionally controlled, and always rooted in real science — yet it lingers like literature. Her stories give readers what they crave: truth with texture and knowledge with consequence.
Biography
Bogdana Vashchenko is a writer and National Geographic Explorer. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, she holds a Master of Science in theoretical physics from Kyiv National University.
Her path has been anything but linear. After leaving academia, she worked a constellation of unexpected jobs — from sewing leather bags to cleaning horse stalls to running an online windsurf shop — each sharpening her adaptability and observational acuity. These experiences shaped her ability to tackle unusual challenges and to see the world with uncommon clarity.
Inspired by the brave mongoose from Kipling’s Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, she embraces the motto: “Run, find out, and tell people.”
She is the author of four popular-science books (Orda Cave Awareness Project; Being a Dolphin; 100 Facts About Dolphins; White Sea Bestiary) as well as a biographical nonfiction work (Natalie Avseenko: Journey to the Depth).
Bogdana has written 17 articles for National Geographic (Russia) and eight feature stories for National Geographic (Georgia). In 2022, she was named a National Geographic Explorer.