Weekly Photo Challenge: tiny

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art, photography, photos, St Petersburg, TINY, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: TINY

While traveling I often find myself looking up at windows, gutters, roofs and lights and often I find a kinds of beauty just above my gaze. On one of my trips, to St Petersburg a few years ago, I spotted these tiny musician jamming atop a light fitting. I loved the patina of the bronze miniature and only wished that I had been able to hear what tune they were playing.

tiny musicians

Weekly Photo Challenge: Jubilant

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Jubilant, music, photo, photogrpahy, singer, St Petersburg, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Jubilant

Jubilant – what a wonderful word, and what an even better feeling. One we may not have as often as we like, but then maybe we don’t take enough pleasure in the little things so we don’t recognize it when it peaks around the corner of our emotions. After all it is so much easier to spot those unhappy moments in the making then the joyous ones before they show up .

I can be Jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen

Bob Dylan

Weekly Photo Challenge: Face

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Face, photography, photos, St Petersburg, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Face

I don’t really take many photos of people – except family maybe and they won’t like it if I post them here – but while thinking about this weeks them ‘face’ I remembered a photo I took of three 1920s beauties I took in St Petersburg (Russia) a few years back.

three Russian beauties in St Petersburg

Weekly photo challenge – Extraordinary

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Extraordinary, photography, photos, St Petersburg, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly photo challenge – Extraordinary

So much of our lives circles around the mundane and what we do on a daily basis that we often forget that most of our memories are made from the unusual. For me many of my memories are of travel, when I break away from the ordinary and get to see the special.

One of my travels in recent years was particularly exceptional for me, it was my trip to St Petersburg. As a teenager I discovered Wassily Kandinsky and Alexander Rodchenko and through them the Russian Avant Garde and it’s birthplace St.  Petersburg.

As time passed my desire to visit this incredible city only grew so when I was finally able to go it was a fulfillment of a dream. It was an extraordinary experience, one so far from my ordinary life that it still colours my thoughts, and possibly always will. I’d love to go back one day and discover more of this extraordinary place.

The view of St. Petersburg’s cityscape as you approach from the Tsar’s summer home Petershof (Petrodvorets)

Weekly Photography Challenge – Intricate

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Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, Intricate, photography, photos, St Petersburg, travel, Weekly Photography Challenge, Weekly Photography Challenge - Intricate

        Intricate is a word that evokes so many thoughts and ideas, but when I read what the word challenge was of the week my first thoughts went back to a trip I took to St Petersburg, Russia a few years ago.

One of the most interesting buildings in St Petersburg is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (also known as  Church on Spilt Blood and Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ).

Completed in 1907 the Church harks back to medieval Russian architecture, unusual in St Petersburg as most of this incredible city is Baroque. But while it is a beautiful building on the outside, it was the inside that awed me.

The entire interior of the church is covered in mosaic, over 7500 square meters of it. And while it was heavily damaged during the Russian Revolution (1917) it has been restored and reopened to the public.

The intricate work is made up of tiny multi-coloured stones, all no larger than my thumbnail, and I cannot fathom how long it must have taken the artist to create such beauty.

Weekly photo challenge – Nighttime

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Egypt, Finland, holidays, Italy, Nighttime, photography, photos, Rome, Russia, Spanish Steps, St Petersburg, the Nile, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly photo challenge - Nighttime

 

I took this while in Finland. A Friend took me out to their cabin in the woods. After a long and very sweating time in the sauna I went down to the lake for a cold dip, and my only company was the moon

Last year I went to Rome and on my first night I took this photo of a lamp up near the Spanish Steps

A few years ago a friend and I went on a trip down the Nile, it was a wonderful holiday filled with mystical adventures and tales of the ancient world. Every night we would make our way down the Nile on a lovely cruise ship and the sun setting over the water would always make me dream

I am particularly proud of this photo. I took it while in St Petersburg and somehow the light was just perfect. I rested my camera on the bridge I was standing on, terrified I’d drop it into the water, held it with my left hand , took the shoot with my right hand and hoped the picture would be clear. I think it worked quite well

 

fernweh

Tags

distant place, feelings, fernweh, german word, miscellaneous, photography, random, Russia, St Petersburg, thoughts, travel, vacation

Everyone around me seems to be going on holidays, or have just been. Sadly this year I don’t have the money to fly away and enjoy an other world for a week or two, but I so long to. This feeling that has been bubbling up inside me for a while now can only be described with the the German word “Fernweh” which literally means “having an ache for a distant place”.

I would love to pack my bag and hurry away, dip my toes in waters uncharted by me, see sights my eyes have never seen before, taste new and exciting flavors, enjoy undiscovered alleys and woods, break away from my life for a little while.
But no matter how much I long, wish and crave I know I can’t make the impossible possible for now, but what I can do is relive past trips and this morning I have been wandering the streets of St.Petersburg in my mind. It was a short 4 day trip I took last year in September, making a livelong dream come true and visit the great City of Czars and Russian legends, a trip filled with awe, sun and an unforgettable time.

And in case you want to tag along as I wander down memory lane and enjoy a city filled with culture and clashing art here are  a few of the many photos I took:

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