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Daniel Kordan (danielkordan)
Daniel Kordan grew up in a beautiful lake region near Moscow. He was always spending most of his free time in nature. While going to school at the Institute of Physics and Technology, he gained experience not only in physics, but also in mountain climbing, hiking and guiding tourist groups in winter and in summer. He quickly became a guide of photo-workshops and chief editor of Continent Expedition magazine. He’s won several photography awards and is a Nikon ambassador. He has over 300,000 followers on Instagram and spends most of his time in Norway’s Lofoten islands and in Tuscany, guiding groups from Europe, UK, US, Asia, and Russia on photo walks. Here’s more on Daniel.
I went on a 10 day Antarctica photography tour. We were on the Greg Mortimer with Aurora tours. Anyone could have booked a tour with Aurora, and their part was mostly fine, but I paid $3000 extra to have a photography tour led by Daniel Kordan. Daniel is a fantastic photographer but he is the worst tour leader I have ever had, bar none. During the tour he spent all of his time with a personal group of 4 friends who came on the tour. They sat together at meals and spent their time together, only speaking in Russian . Daniel spent almost zero one-on-one time with me helping with photography. On the ship he barely even spoke to me. The one time I rode in a Zodiac with him, he and his friends spoke Russian the whole time and acted like I did not exist. When we did landings, he immediately climbed whatever hill he could, busying himself with his own photographing and ignoring most of the tour participants. On the first landing, he took 1600 photos (I took maybe 300). That doesn’t leave much time to help anyone else, which is what he was paid to do.