Personality
Calling
Category
Personalities
"Tranquility is something very important to me."
For Galin Vasilev (gwartmotion), the camera is not just a tool, but a way to organize the world around him. Everything begins with the formation of an idea or a feeling even before he presses the REC button. As a photographer and video content creator who chose Burgas as the place where he lives and creates, Galin shares that peace of mind is essential on a personal level. Not because he doesn't know another rhythm of life, but because he knows it well enough to know he doesn't need it.
The encounter with his first camera remains vivid in his mind to this day. His grandparents' house in Lom, an incredible sunset, and the feeling that whatever he captured at that moment would look amazing. Perhaps this also contributed to his decision years later to enroll in photography as a major at the New Bulgarian University.
While a student, Galin strengthened his connection with photography through drone photography. The perspective from above showed him a world that has always existed before our eyes, but we rarely give ourselves the opportunity to see. It is this "invisibility" that laid the foundations for his most personal student project.
“The idea comes first, and then the shot.”
For his graduation thesis, Galin decided to photograph the salt pans in Burgas. After further research, he realized that the site could look different during various periods of the year. However, the ambitious plan for a series of thirty drone shots quickly faced reality. After the fifth or sixth shot, Galin felt the theme was becoming exhausted, which led him to look at textures or shapes that are difficult to read at first glance. This twist gave birth to the "Symbiosis" project – a collection of shots united by an idea of belonging to something bigger than themselves.
This is also the way Galin thinks about his projects. The idea comes before the shot. Perhaps that is why his photography and video never look like a self-serving collection of beautiful images. There is always a story at the core.
This sensitivity to the story does not remain only within the frame. At the New Bulgarian University, it also carried over into his personal life, where Galin met his partner, Eliza, and together they began to write perhaps the most important story of their lives - that of love. From this, their joint business, 33CreativeLab, was later born. The idea originated from a university project for couples, combined with another course where they had to write a business plan. The shots they took back then were good on their own, but the idea of wedding photography remained somewhere in the background for years to come, until the first real order arrived... and then the second and third. Sometimes things just wait for the right moment to get moving again.
Working together also proved to be a way to get to know each other even better. Galin discovered Eliza to be a multi-layered person. She paints, creates with clay, and when she decides to unleash her creativity, she can sweep everything along her path. An interesting detail from their joint art therapy sessions expresses this well. On a sheet of paper left with no specific task, hers got filled to the very last centimeter, while his remained almost entirely empty, focused in the center.
This dynamic between the two of them is transferred directly into their advertising projects with brands. Eliza is responsible almost entirely for the concept, Galin for the shooting and post-processing, and in the middle lies a constant dialogue where every step of the process passes through both of them. They are not fans of content where the product is pushed too aggressively. They believe that the emotional connection must come first, and everything else follows.
“If in the end you are satisfied with what you do, nothing else matters.”
When Emil Ovasenov, the man behind the Burgas Film Festival, comes across a video by Galin about Burgas in the winter, he offers him to shoot the promotional film for the tenth edition of the festival. At their meeting, he gives Galin and Eliza only one condition: "Do what you do best." For them, this is perhaps the highest form of compliment an artist can receive.
Behind the success of this project is the sense of collectivity that unites the entire 4ourofus team – Galin, Eliza and their close friends, Misho and Yulia. Every time they get together, Galin shares that ideas are constantly flying in the air. This is clearly visible in the final video, in which they manage to turn the festival energy into a visual story, despite the relatively short time they have.
Another project of 4ourofus, which turns out to be one of their most personal, is the short film about the Bulgarian custom "Surva". Filming begins at four in the morning, at minus fourteen degrees. Galin describes these conditions as total stress for the whole team. On the other hand, it is precisely they that force them to experience the ritual in the most authentic way possible. For an hour and a half, 4ourofus become part of the participants' families, and that is exactly what gives the sense of authenticity that is carried over into the final film.
In the future, Galin wants to shoot not so much the traditions, but the people behind them. Specifically, the elderly people whose stories are gradually left untold in the name of technology. For Galin, this is a serious loss. Technology, he says, can provide information, but it cannot replace emotion. And emotion is precisely one of the things that drive us forward.
Perhaps that is why perfectionism remains a constant companion in his work. He doesn't even pretend to have escaped it. There is always a small voice telling him that he can fix something else – a shot, a detail, the editing. But it is precisely the mistakes, says Galin, that are the part of the work that cannot be copied because it is uniquely his. And if he has to describe himself with one image today, he goes back to that sheet from the art therapy – not fully filled in, with room for the next stroke.
