So with the night photography, first of all it was raining which wasn’t ideal, but secondly it was late on Saturday night, so lots of ‘merry’ people around but there were a few level platforms I could rest the camera on for longer exposure shots, got some nice light trails when a bus pulled into the shot on a long exposure of the newly renovated, but historic Hotel Georgia:-

Occasionally though on these walks around the street you seem something really strange, this guy had been staring at the tinted glass for a while on the way down the street and was still there when we got to him:-

The next main walk around a few days later I had stuck the 50mm lens on the camera because I had been using it with a model earlier that day, ideally I would have liked to use a wider lens, but it worked ok for me, got some interesting results with a lot from the hip, but also some shots I couldn’t resist when I saw an opportunity.  This shot is ne of my favourite shots of the year for me so far:-

Saw another interesting guy talking to cars:-

And this crossing place letting the guy know what it thought of his dress sense:-

I took a few shots that day and on the rainy night, have a look at the rest of them by clicking the thumbnails below to see the full image.

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In May were leaving Moscow to move to Hamburg, although a few days before the move Lou got an offer of a move back to the UK with another promotion, so, although we were both looking forward to moving to Hamburg we headed back to Oxford.  Since then I have been planning to open a Photography Studio, which I now have just about got open, it is called PH Positive Studio, and it is in Bicester, Oxfordshire.

Having already said I haven’t really been travelling, I have been back to Moscow once, had a few weekends in Spain and the UK for breaks, and I went to Vancouver.  I will try to write some catch-up posts because I had some fun times, and got some great shots, from shots of my Niece and Nephew playing in the pool in Spain:-

Although there were a few close calls the camera managed to survive!.

My big trip was a holiday in Vancouver to see family, my mum hadn’t seen my Auntie for a few years so I said I would go out there with her.  Whilst there the weather was mostly miserable with some sunny days, but we stayed for 9-10 days so we saw more than I did last year in the few days I was there with Lou.  I did a fair bit of shooting with Models whilst there, and also as usual Pete and I went out to shoot in the street with some night shots on a rainy (going to stormy) Saturday night downtown, and a few other street shooting session.  I will post more about this trip in another post but here is one of my favourite street shots, from the hip, to the side of me:-

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These days Kazan is mainly made up of a mixture of the Sunni Islam Tatar people, and the Orthodox Russian people with a mixture of Churches and Mosques scattered around the city.  But it is in the Kazan Kremlin where you see both of these types of religious building brought together almost side by side with the relatively new Qolsharif Mosque and the Annunciation Cathedral.

The Qolsharif Mosque is a modern construction that was started in 1996 and was inaugurated in 2005 and is built on the site of the original Mosque that was destroyed when Ivan the terrible successfully invaded in 1552.

The Annunciation cathedral is worth a look around inside, and on this visit we had a guide who actually explained the make-up of a typical Russian Orthodox Church, how the icons are laid out, and why, it was fascinating.

Although the photo about was taken using a wide angled lens which distorts slightly, the Soyembika Tower to the left of the shot is actually one of the worlds few leaning towers. As our guide excitedly explained the legend surrounding the the construction of the tower and its purpose is as interesting, if not more so than the rest of the buildings in the Kremlin. The story goes that the last Queen of Tatarstan, Soyembika had refused to marry Ivan the Terrible on two occasions, hence the attempted invasions.  On the third attempt Ivan the terrible succeeded in invading Kazan, and still the Queen was refusing to marry him, but to stop further bloodshed the queen relented on one condition, that he have a building built taller than any other in Kazan, and that he do it in 7 days. Ivan had the tower built adding a new section/storey every day until it was completed on the seventh day, Soyembika climbed to the top of the tower apparently to check he had succeeded then threw herself from the top of the tower to the ground below.

Kazan is a mix of old architecture that has been well preserved and renovated (probably for the *ahem* ‘Millenium celebrations’ in 2005), and some really run down buildings that are either in the process of being renovated, or being allowed to become derelict to the point of falling down.  The people though are very nice, they were polite, courteous, and welcoming and seemingly didn’t care that you were obviously foreign (in some other places we have visited in Russia the people have sometimes been very inquisitive about why foreigners want to visit there).

On the whole it was well worth a visit, a weekend is probably enough time, but be sure to go to the other old areas of the city that have mosques scattered around, we only got a short look at this part of the city and would like to see more of it.

I am trying out using a gallery slideshow below instead of the usual gallery, if you can’t see it go here to see the gallery as a webpage.

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We had booked to stay in a Dacha that actually turned out to be an old brick building that was in the town and it turned out had, in the last few years been devastated by fire.  The lady who ran the Dacha, sveta had a breakfast of Blini made for us when we arrived on Saturday morning which we ate before heading off into the forest. Our driver drove us to the edge where horses that were pulling sleds were waiting, we mounted the sleds and away we went into the fantastically wintery forest:-

We arrived into a clearing in the forest where there was a fire burning, and Sveta’s son waiting for us with drinks, and later sausages to cook over the fire.  There was a bank of snow that had been built up in the clearing and small sledges that resembled dustbin lids that people used to sledge on in the old days in the UK:-

Weirdly they also had a little cubbyhole dug out of the slope with a bearskin laid out which was a bit strange, but all the same it was interesting.  After riding around the forest on the horse-drawn sleds and eating and drinking we headed back to the Dacha, after a short rest we headed off to the Monastery that is the main attraction of Sergiev Posad.  The monastry, ‘Trinity Lavra of St Sergius’ is the spiritual home of the Russian Orthodox Church. It has developed from the original 14th Century wooden collection of building that formed the original monastery founded by St Sergius to the fortified monastery in place since the end of 17th century.

Inside the monastery walls there are many cathedrals and churches of varying age and appearance, they make an visually stunning set of buildings that were hugely busy even in the middle of winter with the snow coming down heavily:-

After an hour or two the light was failing so we headed back to the dacha where Sveta had prepared traditional food starting with Borsch which was delicious. The dinner was followed by some quiet time for me as the girls used the Banya in the house and  jumped into the snow outside afterwards, and following this some entertaining traditional Russian Karaoke (sic).

The next day after breakfast we headed out and notice a nearby building on fire with firefighters seemingly keeping it from affecting nearby houses and controlling the fire enough to let it burn itself out, turns out the wooden house was abandoned and filled with trash:-

We wondered around the town and into a museum about the home life of Russians that had lived in Sergiev Posad, it included traditional clothes, the setup of the houses, and working equipment made of wood to make clothes and rugs.  It was actually fascinating as one of the curators spoke excellent English and talked us through the place, it turns out she was a passion for textiles, and eventually found out she and her mother showed their handmade traditional dolls worldwide.  Another museum that was pretty interested was the actual Toy Museum, although without a guide as such we were limited to looking at the myriad of toys from throughout the ages, and got to pay with some traditional wooden toys.

All in all the weekend was great, glad we visited in the winter as the place looked amazingly bright, on the other hand it didn’t really stop snowing the whole time we were there.

As always with the gallery below please click the thumbnails to see the full image.

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Walking down the bank from the historic centre we got closer to the pub we visited the previous night but first we came across some old machinery left from the industrial days and on it soem very cool, very simple, very sweet chalked on graffiti.

After walking around the back of Doctor Scotch there is a surprising site on the river bank, a monument to the Beatles, in fact the only one of its kind in Russia, very strange to see it here, but we were assured it is due to their popularity in the area at the time, and the amount of bands produced here in soviet times.

Walking down the River was an interesting mixture of old and new industrial buildings, offices, parks shrouded in snow and even the new Presidential residence referenced in the previous post. As we got closer to the dome of the circus the river had more and more mist lingering over it and out of the mist appeared ghostly looking ducks, I am not one for photographic birds too often, but these looked interesting appearing from the mist>

We did eventually arrive close to the circus and as the sun was behind it I got a good chance for a silhouette of the suspended circus dome with the contrasting sharpness of the skyscraper in the background.

After crossing the road ridge by the circus we walked around to a park on the opposite bank where there was some great warm sunlight filtering through the trees so I took the opportunity to take some portrait shots of Lou even though the snow on most of the park (apart from the footpath) was a foot or so thick.

After a walk down the bank of this side of the river bank into the historic centre we met up with Luba from Yekaterinburg for you for a trip out of the city to Ganina Yama where the last Tsar and his family were dumped into a mineshaft initially after being killed in the city.  On the way we stopped at the old Yekaterinburg Train Station which was a beautiful old build with an interesting and detailed statue outside.

When we had driven to Ganina Yama we found a working Monastery made of wood with a small permanent contingent of monks and the monastery has 7 separate Churches in the grounds, one for each member of the family that were killed.  One of the other things you can see here is a fascinating outdoor photo exhibition of family photos taken by Tsar Nicholas II’s family themselves which was fascinating, especially the similarity between the top half of Tsar Nicholas’ face and that of President Medvedev.  The churches themselves looked amazing bathed in the late afternoon glow as you can see.

Listening to what happened at the time made for a pretty solemn walk around the site, as although this was the initial ‘burial’ site the bodies were moved soon afterwards to Porosenkov Ravine, although the location was not officially recorded, clues to its location were found in the Bolshevik records.  The remains found at the second site were confirmed to be at least relatives of the Romanovs by DNA from the living descendants of the Tsar his wife including the British Royal Family.

After walking around the while for a while we drove to the Europe/Asia border marker which although it looks pretty subjective now, at the time it was first defined the line also marked a separation of completely different ecosystems.

After some really tasty Shashlik at a small place not far from the marker we headed back to the city where we left our guide and our driver and we had another look at the religious ice sculptures in the grounds of the Church on the Blood which are fascinating to see, especially at night, and especially this ice model of the church itself.

For the rest of the shots on this second day of the trip just click on the thumbnails below to see the full images and if you hven’s seen it please see the first part of this two-part story.

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