Wise Advanced

Nikon Ambassador Daniel Kordan’s Secret Magical Lands

Landscape Photographer

Danial Kordan has been fascinated by the possibilities of photography since his early childhood. He grew up in a beautiful lake region under Moscow exploring wild nature, spending most of his free time in nature. He graduated from an art painting school when he was a kid. Mixing his love of art and nature, he ultimately found his passion – Landscape photography. During university, he faced much pressure on his quantum physics thesis, and family and friends. Yet he always found pleasure in the pathless woods: places he always returned to and admired. Nature is his inspiration, with all the beauty and variety of colors and compositions.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Luckily when he studied at the Institute of Physics and Technology, he gained experience not only in physics, but also in mountain climbing and hiking, guiding tourist groups in winter and summer. He became a guide of photo-workshops and chief editor of “Continent expedition” magazine. He wrote articles of travel and adventures all over the world.

Daniel has won several awards in photography: Golden Turtle’ 13 Nature nomination winner, National Geographic Russia contest 2013 winner, Best of Russia’13, ’14 ’15 winner, bestphotographer’13, Trierenberg Super Circuit award (best landscape photographer). He has publications in such magazines as Digital SLR Magazine, UK, Photography week, Photography Master Class, National Geographic, Discovery, Photoworld China, Digital Photo (Bauer Media) magazines. His key clients are Apple, Gazprom Neft’, S7 Airlines, RedBull.

Daniel spends most of his time in Norway at Lofoten islands and in Tuscany at villa Gaia, guiding groups from Europe, UK, US, Asia and Russia. He is an official Nikon, Gitzo and Lucroit ambassador.

“I always was looking forward to working with reliable brands of memory cards. It is essential that you feel your data is safe. It is also essential to have fast reliable cards, when you can write time-lapses, videos, shoot panoramas, wildlife without write delay. Normally for my work I try to choose the best. And that's a wise decision.”

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Equipment

Memory Cards

Wise CFexpress Type B

Wise SDXC UHS-II

Wise Portable SSD

Wise CFexpress Card Reader

Cameras

Nikon Z 7

Nikon D850

Camera Setup

ISO 100, f/14 with NIKKOR Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S (preferred)

Self-isolation seldom bothered avid outdoor adventurer Daniel Kordan. During the pandemic period, he led a squad of photographers on three long expeditions at Kuril Islands, Kuril Lake and Jack London Lake this July till September.

The giant plants appeared in front of them during their first journey at Yankicha Island – a part of Ushishir volcano in the Kurils archipelago. “We call these plants ‘sea sunflowers’ among us. This is a chain of islands between Russia and Japan barely visited by humans. I organized a sailing expedition here – basically 3 weeks at sea with no human beings in sight. All the plants were gigantic here, and even ordinary grass was as tall as humans - so you literally need to dive into the grass. This happens due to the very short summer days at the harsh climate of Kurils.” Later on, Daniel visited Kamchatka peninsula and in particular photographed brown bears at Kuril Lake. “It is well known for a special ecosystem where bears fish for the salmon while it’s going up the rivers. Basically there is so much fish in August that sometimes there’s more fish than water in the river. Bears hunt, run and roar at each other. It is non-stop action with sometimes 20-30 bears involved!”

This past autumn in September, Daniel’s adventurous spirit took him on an expedition to Kolyma - a trip to Jack London Lake. “It is hard to imagine a wilder place than Jack London Lake. Just to get here requires 8 hours on airplane from Moscow to Magadan, 10 hours by van on a broken gravel highway, 10 hours by heavy truck in tundra and then moving on a small boat around the lake.”

Daniel recalled the harsh conditions of those three expeditions when opportunities to backup photos are little. “No connection, not possible to charge or copy photos – just pure wilderness with strong and cold weather.” He adds, “The most suitable test (of gears) for such long expeditions where you can’t even backup your images. But on the other hand I do not want to limit myself with small number of images to choose from, so I am taking at least 1TB of storage (a few cards) for such long expeditions plus 8 batteries for cameras. As the Z 7 has only one card slot, so it should be a super reliable and durable card like Wise. It was a great test for my equipment, no fails this time and over 600GB of photo archive with beautiful autumn colors of Russian Kolyma was brought back home safely.”

“I always was looking forward to working with reliable brands of memory cards. It is essential that you feel your data is safe. It is also essential to have fast reliable cards, when you can write time-lapses, videos, shoot panoramas, wildlife without write delay. Normally for my work I try to choose the best. And that's a wise decision.”