Andrejs Zavadskis

Andrejs Zavadskis: Forbes Faces, Desert Dust and a Summit at 5,895 Metres

Latvian photographer Andrejs Zavadskis: Forbes portraits, Dakar Rally, Gumball 3000, Kilimanjaro and Burning Man.

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Andrejs Zavadskis 7 min

European photographer based in Riga, Latvia, and for more than twenty years a man who goes wherever the picture is.

Andrejs Zavadskis, photographer, Riga, Latvia.

Picture three scenes. A Prague rooftop, where a Dutch billionaire gives Forbes a few minutes and expects a cover in return. A Saudi desert track, where a Dakar truck bursts out of its own dust cloud and is gone. The top of Kilimanjaro, 5,895 metres up, where the light lasts seconds and the fingers barely work.

The same photographer was there each time: Andrejs Zavadskis, often named among the most famous photographers Latvia has ever produced.

This is not a biography. Think of it as a highlight reel, cut from a career that never agreed to fit one genre.

The Forbes chapter

Between April 2024 and August 2026, his portraits illustrated at least five Forbes USA features about founders, investors and billionaires:

Portrait of Paweł Chudziński for Forbes, "Europe's Top VC".

The images did not stay in America. Forbes México, Forbes Česko, Forbes Italia and Forbes España published them too, and the Remon Vos portrait joined The Forbes Collection on Getty Images.

What these jobs demand is not a better lens. It is reading a busy person quickly and finding the face behind the job title before the time runs out.

Machines that do not wait

In a studio you can move a light. On a rally stage, the truck is not coming back for a second try.

At the Dakar Rally 2020 in Saudi Arabia he worked through heat, dust and huge distances, where planning matters as much as the idea. At Formula 1 Singapore 2024 it was the reverse: night, reflections, artificial light and pure speed.

Dakar Rally, Saudi Arabia, 2020.

He has also shot five Gumball 3000 rallies, with photographs in the official Gumball 3000 photo book, and Porsche performance cars on the frozen lakes of Swedish Lapland. Different engines, one habit: work out where the moment will be and get there first.

Gumball 3000 at Angkor Wat.

The Playboy years

From 2010 to 2014 he was a principal photographer for Playboy Latvia, across roughly 25 issues. In January 2011 he photographed a cover and featured model at the MAMA boutique hotel in Jūrmala, and in February he helped run a model search together with Radio SWH.

Then came May 2014 and a first for the magazine: singer and TV host Lauris Reiniks became the first man ever on a Playboy Latvia cover, shot by Zavadskis. Lithuanian media picked up the story and named the photographer.

Playboy sharpened his feel for light, pose and mood. Forbes would later add speed to the list.

Off the clock

Some of his best pictures had no client at all. In 2022 he climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and recorded the whole ascent. At Burning Man, in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, he photographed fine dust, temporary art, chance meetings and theatrical light.

Burning Man, Black Rock Desert, Nevada.

In 2021 he worked behind the scenes on the Danish feature film Hvidstengruppen II, a production of Regner Grasten Film and Film Angels Studio, and the Latvian Ministry of Culture published one of his set photographs with his credit. Back in 2009, with the mother's consent, he documented a childbirth, and his blog readers answered with dozens of comments.

A desert, a summit, a film set, a delivery room. Every time, one question: what here deserves to be remembered?

It started with fireworks

Riga, 2004: fireworks over the Radio and Television Tower. He entered the shot in a competition and won first place.

In 2009 a British bride named Sabrina, after six months of looking for the right wedding photographer, found his portfolio online and flew him from Latvia to Britain. Her wedding became the cover and a multi-page feature in the UK magazine South Wales YOURWEDDING. That same year the Latvian Wedding Photographers Association (LKFA) named him Wedding Photographer of the Year, with wins in the Children, Emotions and Bride and Groom categories, among 43 photographers and 182 entries. By 2014 he was on the LKFA jury.

By 2011 he was running his own photo studio in Riga, and his clients over the years have included Nike, airBaltic, LMT, Rimi, Nordea, Swedbank and Tele2. In March 2025 he took third place in the Fstoppers international Critique the Community contest "This Was Difficult!"

Photographs that belong to the people in them

In 2011 he publicly criticised the restrictions placed on photographers at Latvia's 2008 Song and Dance Festival. In 2025 he answered with work: as a volunteer at the School Youth Song and Dance Festival he made more than 7,000 photographs, 2,014 of them in a single dress-rehearsal gallery, so that children and their families could find their own moments.

In 2015, together with Nordea and the Lejasstrazdi Family Support Centre, he gave about 50 disposable film cameras to children. They photographed the nature of Ķemeri and the streets of Riga, their double exposures went on show at the Kolonāde restaurant in Riga, and some of them said they now wanted to become photographers.

The engineer behind the lens

Before photography took over, he studied computer science at Riga Technical University, and that side of him never went away. He has been blogging since March 2008; his 2012 post on why professional photographers cost what they cost drew more than a hundred comments. His YouTube channel holds hundreds of videos on Nikon, Hasselblad and Leica gear, often with original files to download, such as 162 test images from the NIKKOR Z 24–70mm f/2.8 S II made on the Z8 and Z9. In 2026 he took that experience to The Photography & Video Show in Birmingham.

The same year he launched ProPortfolio.pro, a platform that connects photographers, videographers, models, actors, makeup artists, stylists and studios, because a strong image is rarely made by one person.

Follow the work

The cameras are newer and the passport is fuller, but the curiosity is the same one that once pointed a compact camera at fireworks over Riga.

About Andrejs Zavadskis. Andrejs Zavadskis is a Latvian photographer, educator and creative entrepreneur based in Riga, with more than twenty years of commercial, editorial, portrait, automotive, event and travel work. His portraits have appeared in five Forbes USA features (2024–2026) and in international Forbes editions, and he was a principal photographer for Playboy Latvia (2010–2014). He has photographed Formula 1 Singapore, the Dakar Rally and five Gumball 3000 rallies, was named Latvia's Wedding Photographer of the Year 2009 and placed third in an international Fstoppers competition in 2025. In 2026 he launched ProPortfolio.pro.

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