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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I think nobody will argue with it. For me, it was so difficult that I think without my wonderful wife’s financial support I would have already returned to sales and worked in some pitiful store at best. Moreover, in the first half of the year, we were planning to move to another country. Obviously, we couldn’t make it due to the COVID-19. Another dream crashed. Best of all it could be described by the amazing song “Nothing Left To Say” by Imagine Dragons. Every word is just like my life and feelings during this no simple year. http://www.denischurin.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Imagine-Dragons-Nothing-Left-To-Say-kissvk.com_.mp3 2020 also took several greatly talented people who were the landmarks in their spheres. One of them is Sean Connery (I won’t mention the others because they were Russians and you unlikely know them). But as for the creative side of my life, it was a great year. The best so far. I not only took part in an exhibition and got to the final in three photo contests but also have grown very much as a photographer. I compare my photographs taken a year ago to my latest ones and can see an enormous difference. I can even say that I got to the next level. And even more. Exactly this year, I launched my YouTube channel and started to do videography much more seriously. It was a year of immensely huge progress for me. And to walk this year off, I traditionally summing up with nine best photographs. Just like the last year, it is two nines but this time no commercial works at all. All of them were published during the year (but it doesn’t mean all were taken in 2020). The first group is the most liked on my Instagram account (I didn’t even consider Facebook because my photographs have too little attention there). The second one are the best photographs in my opinion. And as always, I believe that all the best is ahead! Thanks to everyone who follows me and liked my photographs! A special, most warm gratitude to those who commented on photographs, watched my videos, rated, and wrote comments on them! You have been really helping and supporting me! Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to everyone, my friends! Take care of yourself and your beloved ones. 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: for the World, for...
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Recently, I have uploaded quite an interesting video on my YouTube channel. Actually, it called “Near The Old Fortress” because it was filmed not far from our local (Leningrad region, Russia) landmark called Krepost’ Oresheck or also known as Shlisselburg Fortress. That’s an ancient Russian stronghold placed on the island in Ladoga lake near the Neva river head. But although this fortress appears in the video and it really looks great, the main and most interesting part of the film to my mind is duck tales caught in the frame. It’s not only a sort of mallard yoga exercises but also a small confrontation between two types of ducks. You can check it by yourself: It was a real pleasure to me to work on this short story and, frankly speaking, I assess it as one of my best videos so far. Therefore, I really hope that you like it either. Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. If you want to SUPPORT my YouTube channel or me personally, you can do it here: for the World, for...
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If you watch my YouTube videos regularly, you may notice that some of them have been presented in several parts. I would like to explain why and gather the parts of such videos in this post. For your convenience. At some moment, I made sure that my videos that are longer than say 5 minutes have less percentage of viewing. I mean the longer the video is the fewer people watch it completely. Of course, it didn’t surprise me a lot. I just had a weird hope that this tendency around the World to prefer videos less than a minute in length won’t touch my ones because “these videos are about nature!” or something like that. Quite naively isn’t it? Frankly speaking, I am still convinced that this tendency doesn’t affect the videos on middle-size and especially big channels. At least, not as substantially as it happens to small and tiny ones such as mine for instance. Therefore, I decided to divide my video called “Forest Flowers” which turned out about 7 minutes long into two parts. Here’s the first one: The good thing about this video is that it could be watched in both ways: as a whole story in two parts and as two separate stories. You can assess it by yourself watching the second part: My next video called “Field, Flowers, And Storm” turned out even longer. That’s why I divided it into even three parts! And if the story in the previous video was very simple (just a walk through the wonderful spring forest with its first flowers), this one is a bit more complex. It starts with the first part in which we can see quite usual events for my trip videos: I came to some location, look over it and then go photographing. But this time, the video ends with the sounds on the black screen. Sort of hint about what will happen in the second part. And the second part doesn’t deceive expectations: it shows the raging element, thunderstorm in all its terrifying beauty. Here I want to mention that I was caught by the thunderstorm in real and got completely wet, and at some moment was even scared a lot by the thunder that boomed exactly above me. So, according to the art laws, this is the climax of the story: The third part is a quite calm ending of the story. According to the laws, again. It shows nature after the thunderstorm: clean, green, and happy. But this part contains a little bit tense moment yet when I found a strange construction in the field and realize its purpose: Well,...
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At the end of June, I became a finalist in the “RGB” international contest of visual arts by Moscow Government Culture Department. Both my photographs, “Quiet” and “Cold Dawn”, were qualified for the final. Therefore, I decided to share with you the small stories behind these photographs. This photo is called “Quiet” and it was taken in December 2019 when it was abnormally warm even for the territory near the Baltic Sea. I deliberately came to that forest because of the weather: rainy, foggy, quite warm (for winter), and cloudy sky. I’ve been waiting for such weather for several months and planned the trip. The only problem was to find a decent plot and catch it before dark due to very short daylight hours. Now, I tend to think that this very shot became one of the first which marked my transition to the next level as a photographer. The “Cold Dawn” photo was taken during my trip to the Ladoga lakeshore in January this year. Actually, I managed to tell the story behind this (and several others) photo in my “Sun, ice, and snow” video on my YouTube channel. You can watch it right here, below. And I can only add that this was a planned trip, again, and I had to wake up at 4:30 am in order to get to the spot, which is 150 km far from my home, before the sunrise. Although the temperature was just -15 degrees C it was very cold because of the strong and icy wind. Moreover, in one moment I suddenly fell through the ice so had to wander the most part of the day with my feet wet. In conclusion, I just want to say that if you want to support me and my channel, you can do it here: for the World, for Russia. You don’t need to spend a lot by the way! It would be a great help anyway! P.S.: Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, and...
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As you may already know, I launched my YouTube channel at the end of February. Is it so or not, you are unlikely one of my subscribers due to there is only 27 of them yet. Therefore, I decided to tell a bit what my channel is about and what I’m going to do there in the future. The first two types of videos with which I started my channel are the short films about a landscape photographer’s trips and slide shows of my best photographs shot before 2020. I’m hardly going to keep making slide show videos further because the idea was just to introduce my channel newcomers with my best previous photographs. To my mind, three of them are enough. As for the short films about my photographic trips, I’m going to proceed to make them especially considering that I already shot a small bunch of footage. Furthermore, now I think that it could be interesting to many people because I always try to show something special be it an interesting foreshortening or a whole story told in the video like it was, for example, in the “Escape From Home” short film: Besides, I already started to shoot the footage which will become a series of videos all connected with one general line. And this line will come to its climax and reveal the sense in a few months. To be clear, I made a welcome video that automatically shows on my channel’s main page. You can watch it here: Now about my future plans. Honestly, I already posted one video that I differ from photographic trip films. It differs not much actually. The point is that this type of video is not about photographer trips but about landscapes and wildlife. So, there’s no ugly me in the frame, 🙂 only beautiful nature! Additionally, I’m going to start my tutorial video series. They won’t be about post-processing the images so far due to I don’t have the equipment to catch the screen, and I don’t plan to buy it for the time being. Of course, it would depend on my channel viewers’ requests first of all. If there’s enough to start, I will do it for sure. By now, that’s not so. Therefore, I will start with “in the field“ tutorials. I don’t want to make another obvious video about the rule of thirds, equipment for long exposure photography, etc. in addition to the tons of thousands similar ones already existing on YouTube. It makes no sense. Opposite, I’m going to talk about some simple tips and, maybe, reveal small secrets of landscape photography. About the things...
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