A shoot is a story of meeting someone.
My name is Tata Melnyk. I have been photographing people since 2003.
Trust has to be earned.
Most people book a shoot to get photographs. What actually happens is that you spend two hours being properly looked at. You have a chance to see not only your everyday self but a side of yourself you don't usually meet.
The photographs will come, and they will be good. But a portrait of someone who was actually seen looks different from a portrait of someone who was being photographed. You can see it, and it cannot be added in post-production afterwards.
The beginning of a photoshoot is always a quiet one: we take our time before the camera comes out. Then the connection follows, and the truest portraits almost always come at the end — which is why I hand over more frames — the whole arc of how you changed during the shoot.
We're used to hiding some parts of ourselves. It's important to me to expose them, at least for a little while, during our photo shoot. How I do that I do not entirely know myself: it is a kind of tuning in — you feel for the person, for where it hurts and where it lights up. Most often the way there runs through awkwardness: it is frightening to see yourself. I have felt that myself, on the other side of the camera.
All of it rests on trust.
The photographs will come, and they will be good. But a portrait of someone who was actually seen looks different from a portrait of someone who was being photographed. You can see it, and it cannot be added in post-production afterwards.
The beginning of a photoshoot is always a quiet one: we take our time before the camera comes out. Then the connection follows, and the truest portraits almost always come at the end — which is why I hand over more frames — the whole arc of how you changed during the shoot.
We're used to hiding some parts of ourselves. It's important to me to expose them, at least for a little while, during our photo shoot. How I do that I do not entirely know myself: it is a kind of tuning in — you feel for the person, for where it hurts and where it lights up. Most often the way there runs through awkwardness: it is frightening to see yourself. I have felt that myself, on the other side of the camera.
All of it rests on trust.
BEFORE now
Until 2014 I worked at the TV channels Ukraine, Football & Football+ as a satellite coordinator — organising live broadcasts: booking satellite time slots, working with satellite uplink & downlink engineers, keeping journalists on schedule for going live. A live broadcast cannot be reshot. After that, account management in telecom. The channel is gone now; it was closed a couple of years ago.
I started shooting in 2003, on film, alongside that first job. The first assignments came while I was still working there.
In 2016 I left for Georgia — and there I worked only as a photographer. That is ten years: hotels, schools, brands, hundreds of portraits, and a scene of my own.
What I brought back is experience, visual intuition built over time, and southern warmth — you can see it in the way I work with light.
Now I am in Kyiv. Among other reasons, because it matters to me to be on my own land & with my people.
I started shooting in 2003, on film, alongside that first job. The first assignments came while I was still working there.
In 2016 I left for Georgia — and there I worked only as a photographer. That is ten years: hotels, schools, brands, hundreds of portraits, and a scene of my own.
What I brought back is experience, visual intuition built over time, and southern warmth — you can see it in the way I work with light.
Now I am in Kyiv. Among other reasons, because it matters to me to be on my own land & with my people.
