IPS member Luidmila Pestun won the IFC COVID-19 Ideas competition. Our IPS editor caught up with Luidmila to find out how she came up with this cool idea.
Tell us a little about Luidmila Pestun
My name is Liudmila Pestun. I typically go by Mila. I’m originally from Belarus and have been living in D.C for past 4.5 years, which is also exactly how long I’ve been with IFC. I have a small family that consists of my partner and a husky puppy, who would be a gorgeous creature to take photos of, if only he didn’t hate the camera.
How long have you been an IPS member and how did you find out about the photography club?
I joined IPS about two years ago. My colleague and friend, Prapti Sherchan, told me about the club and brought me to my first meeting.
When did your photography journey begin?
My journey in photography started with modeling for my friends. At a time, I had a lot of friends who experimented with photography. Later, when I started working for USAID/Belarus team I was tasked with leading communications work that was at an early stage of development at the time. As a part of this initiative I took a training in how to work with a digital camera. Soon after I got my own camera, and since then I’ve been taking pictures regularly.
You won first prize in IFC’s COVID-19 Ideas competition. Congratulations!! How did your idea around Virtual Reality (VR) and 360° camera photography come about? It sounds really cool especially with the current global travel restrictions.
My work with VR stems from my photography passion, for sure. When I go on missions, I always bring my camera with me. My team lead started experimenting with bringing 360 photo and video cameras on missions and when possible delegated that piece of work to me. At first, it was purely for communications purposes. However, when COVID hit, we were looking for ways to continue supporting our clients. For that we needed to find the way to link visuals from the field with our technical experts, and VR emerged as an operational tool. That was the way for us to put “virtual” boots on the ground. I developed a protocol grounded in the best practices we already learned and helped teams deploy VR missions. Later I pitched the idea for the competition that IFC had to stimulate innovative thinking around COVID solutions and won.
**To see how IFC uses VR and photography to capture footage watch this YouTube video
If money was not an issue where would you go and what would you photograph?
If money wasn’t issue, and time wasn’t an issue, and family commitments weren’t an issue, I would go everywhere where people are. I wouldn’t limit myself. I favor portrait genre over any other because people are the most beautiful and unique subjects.
Thank you Mila for sharing your inspirational story.
