Well, it’s time to take stock of the year. For me, this year became unbelievably intense and changing. Precisely 365 days ago, I was only hoping to get the approval of my startup project to develop it in Portugal. Today, I live in this beautiful country. For me, this year consisted of: getting a startup visa, moving to Portugal, starting to learn the second foreign language (Portuguese), 5-months apart from my best friend, reunification with her, meeting the ocean for the first time in my life, my first photography masterclass, deletion by the Instagram Company and recovery by myself of my account, restarting my Facebook account from scratch, opening my online store on Etsy, and many less important and noticeable events. Unfortunately, I can’t tell that this year was full of photography accomplishments. (In fact, I only got to the final of one little known and insignificant photo contest.) On the one hand, it was expected and natural because I had to focus on many different things. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t take landscape photographs (and if you follow my Instagram, you perfectly know it). Moreover, I can see a clear improvement in the level of my works. Furthermore, I have two ongoing projects now: an unusual eco-photobook (consisting of my photographs and little stories and wonderful illustrations by Polina Kudelkina) and a top-secret-yet project. At the same time, I almost gave up my YouTube channel. I will explain all the reasons later, in a separate post. In a couple of words, I can tell that it takes too much effort and time and gives back a tiny feedback. Now, it has no sense to run it at the same pace. I have many plans for the following year. And high hopes, of course! To conclude, let me show two nines of the best photographs on my Instagram account during the year. As usual, the first nine is according to my followers’ opinion: The second one is my favourites among not as popular as previous: Well! Thank you very much to everyone who follows me anywhere. The special and warmest gratitude goes to those who liked and commented on my posts. I very much appreciate it! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Stay safe and healthy! See you next year! Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. If you want to SUPPORT my YouTube channel or me personally, you can do it here. Or you just...
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About a month and a half ago, I posted here, on my blog, a short story about my visit to Lisbon and meet the Atlantic Ocean. At the end of that post, I wrote that I got a new dream – to see the ocean closer because, at that time, I saw it from a distance. I didn’t dare to think that this dream may come true so quickly! Yes, several days ago, I came to Cabo da Roca (Cape Roca)! You know, my life experience taught me that you shouldn’t await anything, shouldn’t imagine how wonderful something would be. Ever. Otherwise, you risk being disappointed. But this time, I didn’t even notice that I imagined, that I waited. Luckily, there wasn’t a pale shadow of disillusionment. Frankly, at some moment, I barely held back my tears. That’s how amazing it was. Of course, I shot not only photographs but a short story, a travel film. I hope you enjoy watching it no less than me filming it. (By the way, there’s a moment in the video when inscriptions in Portuguese show in the frame. You can turn on the English subtitles.) By the by, if you want to buy any of the photographs that appear in the video, simply connect me the way that’s the most convenient for you. Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. If you want to SUPPORT my YouTube channel or me personally, you can do it here. Or you just...
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Thanks to a happy coincidence, almost two weeks ago, I visited Portugal’s capital, the amazing city of Lisbon. I spent there one day and a couple of hours and about half of the day was my free time. Of course, I took my camera and a tripod and went for a walk. Here I should step away from this story to tell another one, fairly important in this context. Until my 25 I’ve never seen the sea. My classmates in school every autumn told me lots of stories about how they spent their summer vacation in the South at some sea (although for Saint-Petersburg, most of Russia is south, to be honest). And in my child consciousness, “south” became some wonderful but far country, almost fairy tale land. After several years, I started to ask my father why we’ve never been to the sea. But he always gave me some excuses. Much later, I realized that for some reason, he simply never liked south at all with its hot weather, crowds of tourists, and any other unpleasant attributes that appeared in his head. And I suddenly understood that I have a dream – I wished to see the sea. In 2004, together with one wonderful girl who became my wife two years later, two of her friends, a guy and a girl, I finally went to the Black Sea. It is still one of the best vacations in my life. I fell in love with the sea. Perhaps forever. About ten years later, one of my former colleagues (and he is still my good friend; he is also a former submariner) told me about the ocean. Probably, he’s a good storyteller, or maybe I’m a quite impressionable person, or perhaps both, but at that moment, he gifted me a new dream – I wanted to see the ocean. At last, I got to my initial story. Having only half a day and knowing that Lisbon has several spots with a view of the Atlantic ocean, I didn’t doubt a minute where exactly to go. That’s why my new video below was filmed along the embankment of Tagus river from the 25th of April Bridge (which was immensely amazed me) to some pier with the desired view. In a few hours, I walked several km, absorbing emotions, memorizing views, filming footage, and capturing photographs. And I finally saw the ocean… Now, I have a new dream: to visit Lisbon one more time, to walk through another part of this unusual, wonderful city, and to visit the famous, most western point of Europe, Cabo da Roca. Thanks for reading and watching!...
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Several days ago, I finished my long-long video about the journey to Russian Karelia that my wife and I had in autumn 2020. It’s a real saga that consists of seven chapters. I would like to tell some details about “A Journey To The Rocky Land” in this post. The first chapter is called “The Marble Canyon”. I chose such a title because our first trip was to the most famous landmark in Karelia, the artificial canyon with this name placed not far from the Ruskeala settlement. It was a huge quarry where the marble was extracted from 1765 till the early 90s of the XXth century. The marble from this quarry was used in the finishing and decoration of such buildings in Saint Petersburg as Saint Isaac’s and Kazan cathedrals, The State Hermitage Museum, Marble Palace, St. Michael’s Castle, and a couple of subway stations. In 1998, all extraction works were stopped, the quarry was filled with water and got the status of the cultural heritage site. Before showing the beauty of this canyon and nature around, the first chapter explains why we all need vacations. The second chapter is devoted to a complex of waterfalls on the Tohmajoki river. That’s a touristic landmark with the corresponding constructions like handrails, souvenir shops, and, of course, a lot of people. Therefore, it demanded enough patience from me to find spots and/or to wait for the moment to take a decent shot and footage. I wanted to take some alpine sunset photographs for quite a long time. That doesn’t mean I’ve never taken such captures, but the last time was fairly way back, and I wanted to try myself again as I had a new vision and skills. We chose the Hiidenvuori mountain, which was quite far from our temporal home. But for that, we got fantastic views and beautiful sunset. We decided not to go far away for the fourth chapter because we had not so high but exciting mountain almost beside our home. Moreover, I wanted to take some shots from the mountain top during heavy rain. The Paasonvuori mountain gave us not only what I wanted but also an amazing, fairy-tale-like forest near its foot. The capital of Russian Karelia is Sortavala city. Just near the city’s edge, there’s a wonderful mountain park. We visited it with pleasure, and that footage is the base of the saga’s fifth chapter. Our pre-last trip was to the amazing, absolutely stunning waterfall called “Belye Mosty” which means “white bridges”. In fact, there are two waterfalls on two Kulismayoki river arms (and there were two bridges over them all made of...
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Today is quite an important date for me. My YouTube channel exists already a year! Of course, I don’t count from the moment when I registered on YouTube! I mean a year since I started uploading my own videos. So, what do I have by now? Well, in general, the channel grows up much slower than I hoped initially. But, frankly speaking, now I have no idea why I expected that it will rocket to the skies in the first year. Actually, that was quite silly considering which content I offer and that I hadn’t an intention to buy lots of ads. Thus, as I know now, my development is quite normal. The more noticeable result I have is the obvious increase in the quality of my videos. If one year ago I certainly had some understanding of what and how to shoot, how to gather all footage into a whole story and I did it not bad to my mind, (here’s my first short film on the channel): now, I already have a good conception of what is edit and post-processing in videography. I have a solid understanding of how to not just paste music to the footage but combine video and audio into a whole artwork. Compare the previous video to my latest published one: I perfectly know that I’m much far from what could be named as a good filmmaker. I still have a lot of things to know and learn. But only who’s going will pass the way. No less important I love to go. For those of you who follow me no matter on which platform exactly, I prepared a small gift to thank you for your support and interest. That’s early access to my newest video called “Recollections of the sea”. (In fact, the footage for it wasn’t taken lately, the opposite, it’s been shot in 2011, 2012, and 2017 but I have finished editing just today.) It is accessible for watching only by a direct link so far. I will open it for wide access only on 27th April. Hope you enjoy it! And thanks to everyone who follows and supports me! There’s a lot of interesting ahead so stay tuned! Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. If you want to SUPPORT my YouTube channel or me personally, you can do it here. Or you just...
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