for. He was then promoted to Chief of Construction, and managed a staff of around 50 people. His wife at that time, Galina, who was also an engineer, helped him to discover and pursue his natural talent in photography through many sleepless nights developing and printing the analog images in Kyiv, which eventually won him praise at the international photo exhibitions. Career as a photographer By the mid-1970s, Kostin had lost most interest in the construction industry, and was frustrated with the low fixed salary. He professed that he enjoyed photography, specifically portraitures, and won a gold medal for a portrait of his wife in Kyiv's annual photographic exhibition. He had subsequently entered into at least 80 such exhibitions and photographic road-shows throughout the world. Kostin's career as an amateur photographer earned him more than twice the amount of salary than his career as Chief of Construction in the Construction Bureau of Kyiv. He was then employed in one of Ukraine's TV station as a copywriter. He was subsequently made an anchor for a monthly photographic programme, where he interviews some of most accomplished photographers around the world. He was simultaneously employed as the Chief of Construction, effectively holding two formal careers. A year and half later, the show was canceled, and he attempted to apply for a placing at Novosti Press Agency (APN) in Moscow, Russian SFSR. He was however, rejected by Galina Pleskova, then Editor-in-Chief for the agency. Kostin effectively ended his engineering career when he returned to Kyiv where he resorted to sleeping in the streets to pursue his photographic career. The Kyiv branch of APN agreed to permit him the use of their photographic development labs. The labs became his temporary abode for around five years after which he was employed as war reporter for Novosti. Kostin covered some of the most severe third-world wars where the Soviet Union was involved, such as in Vietnam War and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, where he fielded as a non-Communist Party affiliated reporter for Novosti. Due to the fact of non-alignment, he was restricted from entering the front-lines. At Chernobyl After returning from Afghanistan, he began to work periodically for Novosti from the Kyiv branch. He reported on local and trans-Soviet matters but rarely left the state. On the late evening of 26 April 1986 a helicopter pilot whom he worked closely with for his journalistic activities alerted him