Farewell to Slavianka

June 7, 2013. It's nearly 11 o'clock at night, but completely light outside.

White nights in the St. Petersburg area. 

We are leaving Catherine's Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, having been wined and entertained (as I wrote earlier ) by a classical concert and a petite lady in red making an occasional appearance--and the walls of the great palatial hall shake with her operatic shrieks competing with a nightingale. 

Like this. 

It's always the tiny ones, isn't it? 

 

As I walk toward the gate, I am using my telephoto lens to shoot closeups of imperial heraldry over the palace with the dual-headed eagle and the black-gold-and-white flag.

Then I hear it. One of my favorite military marches!

The trumpeters who greeted us as we entered are now saying "goodbye" with, well, Farewell to Slavianka. The latter is an imperial-turned-Soviet march that now exists in numerous instrumental, vocal, and lyrical varieties. 

So when you look at the image below, this is what you should hear. Well, perhaps, you should envision a tank, too. And a bear, to make it extra-Russian! 

 

Criminal Physiognamy?

Peter-and-Paul is the original fortress of St. Petersburg constructed by Peter the Great on the shores of Neva River for the sake of defending the newly founded city. Today, it houses several museums and curiosities. One of them is the museum of medieval torture primarily focused on judicial corporal punishment in Europe and Russia in the late medieval and early modern period. Like many similar establishments, it contains both historic artifacts and wax models. Some of the latter are so realistic that they could be used in film and photography. 

I felt particularly inspired by one specimen that was meant to illustrate a Russian criminal with facial branding indicating the types of crimes of which he was convicted. So I sketched him:

Peterhoffing

Peterhof is a seaside imperial-palace complex of Peter the Great on the Gulf of Finland known as the Russian Versailles, in part thanks to the ultra-controlled French-style gardens, in part--due to the tsars' attempts to outdo their European counterparts in terms of general decor.

The Emperor's own palace contains pompous Baroque decorations, Oriental-imitation cabinets, women's boudoir with harps and elaborate cosmetic boxes, as well as hundreds of paintings, including the series focused on Russo-Turkish war of the late 1700s commissioned by Catherine the Great, who blew up a ship so that German painter Jacob Phillip Hackert could accurately depict the battle of Chesma--mushroom cloud and all!

There are dozens of fountains in the palace-complex parks: Baroque, Roman-style, "tricky" fountains--practical jokes, surprising visitors by spraying them with water, and a massive cascade commemorating Russia's military victory over Sweden by depicting Samson battling a lion as its focal point.

Cool alley ways, carefully selected flowers, and a life-size statue of Peter towering over his visitors--complete with a good-luck tradition of tossing coins into his knee-high boots add to the experience.

There is even a Wagneresque Lohengrin-style swan boat below the Grand Cascade!

My favorite part? Leaving it all to chase Eurasian hooded crows, ducks, and sea gulls on the Gulf of Finland with my telephoto lens.

P.S. The images are still mobile.

 

Charming Kitsch

Had lunch. Then conquered a village. 

shuvalovka1.jpg
shuvalovka2.jpg

I've been using the word "kitsch" a lot lately, haven't I? Today's impromptu visit to Shuvalovka, an ideal reenactment of a traditional Russian village in the St. Petersburg area, was a welcome break from a heavily loaded schedule of a typical tourist. Named after the Shuvalov noble family, the village comprised quaint wooden houses with folk Russian carving, small cattle, amazing birds of prey like falcons and owls, birches--the quintessential Russian tree immortalized by the likes of Sergei Esenin, blacksmith's workshop, sauna, mill, and a wooden and brightly painted replica of a medieval Slavic ship!

Even my mobile photographs (though I took some with my fisheye lens as well) resemble Russian lacquer boxes with idyllic summer scenes of the country side. This village was a simulacrum that exists only in folk tales, and yet I wanted to stay.

A Welcome from Our Northern Capital

There are two things that disappoint foreigners about my "lacking" Russianness: that I'm not a vodka drinker (or hard liquor, for that matter), and that, having been born and raised in Moscow, I've never been to St. Petersburg. 

Well, one of the two changes today, because our ship has arrived in this northern capital! So far, the Neva River gods seem to be keenly aware of my military interests, as our ship is docked close to the famous Krasin icebreaker.

 

Corvus: the Definitive Collection

To be more precise, I should've called this blog "Pretty Decent Photos of Ravens and Crows I've Taken so Far in the Rocky Mountains and throughout Japan." But the latter lacks a certain literary quality as well as an inflated sense of self-importance so typical of the blogosphere. Peer pressure!

I've always considered crows and ravens to be quite mysterious. Of course, mythic systems from around the world are filled with references to these creatures: from the Scandinavian Huginn and Muninn to the Japanese Yatagarasu, not to mention Russian fairy tales about Voron Voronovich (that's Raven Ravenson to you!), on which I grew up. But to me, this is also about the uncomfortable tension between their noble, majestic appearance and their somewhat morbid, scavenging function, which I occasionally get to observe whenever a local deer turns into roadkill.  

Every time I accidentally get too close with my camera, little robins flutter their wings and fly off, whereas mallards simply walk away, awkwardly swaying from side to side. Crows, however, don't leave: unfazed by my presence, they slowly examine me. In fact, sometimes I can't help but feel that they're reluctantly humoring me with an iota of their condescending attention because I'm a nosy avian paparazzi.  

How can you not take these birds seriously?