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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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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OK, here’s the promised “another story”. (And here’s the first part if you haven’t read yet) Not so long ago, I was going home by subway. I was sad a bit for multiple reasons and to distract from my mirthless thoughts I was playing chess. Here I should notice that in my home city subway is usually full of people and that’s why I almost never take a seat – there’s always a woman with or without children or some older person who needs to sit more than me. So, I was standing opposite the seat row, holding a handrail, and playing chess on my smartphone. At some moment, a young woman entered the carriage and sat down right in front of me. I took a glance at her and managed to notice her beautiful but sad eyes (of course, she was wearing a mask as almost everyone in public transport now, and I’m not the exception). Then, I continued to play my game but the further time passed, the more I noticed some weird thing in my mind. It was like a tiny thought growing and getting stronger with every minute. Words came to me from nowhere, a sort of. Or a someone’s voice which you hear quite weak because it distant for now, so you proceed doing your deeds. But the voice is going louder and at some moment you already can’t ignore it due to it disturbs you and distracts you from your activity. And then you finally have to listen to it and afterward you understand every word. In my case, those words were: “Say to her: ‘You’ll manage the most important thing. Just believe in yourself!’” “What?!” – my first mental response was. Words in my head repeated… Well, you may probably already think that I’m some kind of person who always hears the voices in his head and most of the time wears a white jacket with long sleeves bounded behind his back. That’s not so. Yes, I always have a mental chat with myself but the mentioned above was completely different! Frankly, I’ve never had anything similar before. Therefore, let me keep telling. I frowned and even asked: “How, bloody hell, should I do it? Touch her shoulder and say these more than weird words?” But the answer to all my questions was the same: “Say to her: ‘You’ll manage the most important thing. Just believe in yourself!’” It was like something is boiling inside me. The closer the train went to my station, the stronger it was boiling. Here I should say that I’m quite a shy person and usually don’t...
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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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I bet you thought seriously about angels at least once in your life. (Of course, if you are a religious person this text is certainly not for you, so it’ll be better for you just to check out my photographs. No offense.) By “seriously” I mean not something like “Angels, yes. They’re God’s helpers on Heaven”. I mean sort of what “angels” could ever mean. Were them, I don’t know, the aliens coming to the ancient people and gave them some technology, or maybe it is kind of a symbol of some higher power, or something else, whatever. I personally get back to this question periodically during my entire conscious life. Naturally, I don’t have a solid answer just because I’m not a preacher or a theologist. I’m a simple thinking person. And I had a small incident 25 years back that I still regard as a little wonder. That wasn’t something supernatural, don’t count on it! 🙂 But it was a piece of help that came unexpectedly but exactly right on time from an absolute stranger. I was 15 or 16 and took part in something in the nature of the city’s field-and-track competition among high school students. I was never good at long-distance running so I haven’t an idea how I got there, perhaps our school just couldn’t find enough good runners for their team and therefore they took even me. That race was especially hard for me. Firstly, because I always was a highly responsible person. Respectively, I was doing my best and even more just not to come last. I managed it but of that, I was getting a problem with my breathing. After I crossed the finish line and was slowing my pace I suddenly started feeling an acute pain in my left side with each exhalation like something inside me is going to explode. So, I instinctively stopped letting air out and took an inhale, and after that tried to exhale one more time. Situation repeated. And one more time. I started to panic. Most of all because I realized that I can’t ask for help and even can’t tell what’s wrong with me. So, I was walking far and far from the main crowd, trying to exhale but the mentioned above was repeating time after time. My lungs were getting bigger and bigger, I was exhaling less and less air feeling the same acute pain, and didn’t know what to do. And when I started feeling that already the inhales bringing me pain, and I really thought that I’m going to die right there, in the city’s park, some old person who...
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