As I mentioned in the previous post I went to 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.  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 on a few occasions, a mixture of night photography (Long Exposure/Low ISO and Short exposure/High ISO), some daytime shooting from the hip, and some shooting interesting scenes of people.

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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Well, it has been a while since I wrote in the blog, but I am not really travelling anymore, old news for most of you but here is the round up of what has been happening.

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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Kazan is the modern day capital of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan and lies about 450 miles to the east of Moscow where the Volga and Kazanka Rivers meet. Kazan was formed in the early 15th century but became the capital of the Tatar Khanate that emerged from the Golden Horde although it said the the Volga Bulgars also had a settlement on this site for a few hundred years by then.  Ivan the terrible tried three times to conquer Kazan before he succeeded in 1552, at this point the native Tatars that survived the siege were encouraged to become Christian in order to maintain their positions, or thrust into obscurity and possibly even killed.

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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Sergiev Posad is the closest of the ‘Golden Ring’ cities near to Moscow, of the Golden Ring we have already visited Vladimir and Suzdal.   We hadn’t been to the Golden Ring in winter, Sergiev Posad is the closest to Moscow, and also looks amazing in the winter so a group of us decided to visit for a couple of days.

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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The final part of the session with Paul (Following on from  the previous portrait post, and Lingerie Post) was the Nude section, half of which looked pretty uncomfortable for Adriana until Paul got her a cushion to put under her back (she was bent backwards over the arm of the chair).

This time we started with the high-key look utilising all the lights and with Adriana in a comfortable position:-

Adriana then changed position  to the one that appeared really uncomfortable with the lighting changed once again to give her the appearance of a darker skin tone:-

Paul then gradually took the lights away, and changed some positions of the lights and after a few shots I took one of my favourite shots of the day, the background light spilling onto her face looks perefect to me.:-

Adriana once again changed position to sitting on the chair and gave another great shot that was more low key and Adriana was a little more comfortable but more demur:-

The light was pretty consistent after that so we tried a number of poses, and finally I really liked this one, and I left this one without converting to Black and White:-

The one consistent thing I did notice during the nude shots was Adriana’s expression was always very serious without looking uncomfortable which I liked.

The full gallery of the images is below, just click on the thumbnails to see the full, uncropped images:-

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