Russia – Peter Oshkai photography

July 12, 2015July 17, 2015

Summer heat

I find that our perception of air temperature is not only subjective, but also relative, i.e. it depends on what we experienced recently. My recent trip to Europe was unusually long and included stays in Italy, Russia, Netherlands, so I had an opportunity to compare summer weather in these countries. Genoa in May seemed very hot. There were a couple of days when people flocked to the beach in the neighbouring Boccadasse, a Chinque Terre-like idyllic town, and the purple-coloured fountain in the middle Genoa looked like an oasis in the hot maze of the narrow streets.

Eighteen degrees (Celsius) in Amsterdam felt cold after hot and humid Voronezh, and it set a stage for the 45-degree heat of Madrid to be almost shocking. The good news about Spanish heat is that the humidity is low, which makes it tolerable. Also, further South, in Nerja, the temperature was much more comfortable 35 degrees, and the breeze from the sea made for exceptionally nice warm evenings – something that I miss in Victoria.

Weather is an important aspect of photographs, but I often forget to consciously convey it in the pictures. Most of our everyday activities are weather-independent, yet weather has a strong emotional resonance – perhaps, a remnant of prehistoric times. As I work through my photos, I will try to use the photos with distinct weather elements to paint a more personal picture of the various locations. This is quite challenging, though, as our sense of temperature is inherently non-visual, so the visual clues of summer heat are often subtle and indirect (sweat on the subject’s forehead, blueish shadow in harsh light, etc.)

Perhaps, it would make an interesting project to try to show different kinds of weather, from nice to nasty to dangerous in a single series of photos.

June 18, 2015

Drinking age

After a very impressive circus performance in Voronezh, which our three-year-old daughter enjoyed tremendously, the entire family, including the grandparents, went to a children’s cafe called “Lakomka” (which means something like “sweet tooth” in Russian) located just across the street from the circus. There, we experienced a bit of a culture shock – there was no ice cream on the menu, but there was a bar with a large selection of alcohol.

To be fair, we enjoyed the pastries, coffee and juice, but the mismatch of the child-friendly branding and the “grown-up” drink menu was a little funny. It seemed like a perfect set-up for a Russian anecdote – “A man walks into a bar…” type of a joke.

Perhaps, years of living in North America shaped my expectations of what “child-friendly” means a bit too heavily, but every time we travel, I generally find it refreshing that in Europe (e.g. in Ireland or France) parents can bring their kids to pubs and restaurants and enjoy a pint of beer or a glass of wine, while children are picking at the kid’s plates (or even sleeping in their strollers).

June 3, 2015

Aquarium: focus on people

The reception at my conference in Genoa was held in the Aquarium, one of the largest in Europe. At that time, I realized that the most interesting photos of aquaria are actually images of the visitors, not the actual exhibits of fish, reptiles, etc. While the panorama of Genoa at sunset that I shot from the rooftop of the aquarium was impressive, I did not find many photogenic subject inside the exhibit itself.

A couple of weeks after, when we visited a much lower-profile “oceanarium” in Voronezh with my family, I shot almost exclusively my daughter enjoying the site, and the opportunities for interesting (from my, very subjective, perspective) shots were numerous.

From the technical standpoint, flash photography is usually not allowed in aquaria, so a fast lens is a must. I used my Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM exclusively. It is wide enough to allow some flexibility for cropping, but does not distort the image as much as wider lenses do. In addition, it is light, compact, and has great bokeh, which makes it my favourite walk-around lens.

May 29, 2015May 29, 2015

Eurasia

Walking through the streets of Voronezh, I have been trying to place my impression of this Russian city between those from my recent trips to China and Italy. I think that this town is, literally, in between China and Western Europe, not only geographically, but also culturally.

Some of the street corners in the neighbourhood where I grew up look as if they were taken out of Milan, with a notable exception of many advertising signs and billboards, all in loud, conflicting colours. Right next to these neighbourhoods are new construction cites and Soviet-style architecture that are characteristic of China.

I think it would be interesting to find images that would highlight the connection with both the East and the West that exists in Russia.

March 3, 2015

My neck of the woods

When I think of Russian landscape, at least that of the European part of Russia, the history of which is heavily influenced by the invasions of Mongols and Tartars, I imagine it as a vast steppe. In reality, until relatively recent times (mid-XVIII century), the European Russia was dominated by forests.

I realize the great importance of forests in Russian history and culture only now, when reading the lectures by Vasily Klyuchevsky. He explains that the forest was not only the natural resource and a strategic barrier between the early Russian city-states and the Asian invaders, but also the spiritual haven, a place where, for example, hermits would retreat to live in silence in order to escape the stresses of then-modern society. I suppose, nowadays, living without Internet would be a comparable feat…

When I go to Russia this year, I would like to try to take some photos of (whatever remains of) its forests. Generally, I find that photographing forests is not easy – the light is limited, the focus of the composition if not easy to define, unlike in the pictures of sea coasts or mountains. Nevertheless, some of my favourite landscapes from BC are those of the forests (e.g. the image above.) The West Coast’s forests and the trees themselves, though beautiful, are quite different from those of Russia. I wonder if I would be able to convey this difference in a photograph…

July 18, 2012April 27, 2013

Clouds over Russia

After a week of brutal heat wave, when the temperature almost never dropped below 30 degrees Celsius, rain storms suddenly came over the Central European Russia. Svetlana and I shot this time lapse of the brooding clouds while taking our daughter for a walk during our trip to Voronezh. I attached the GoPro HD Hero 2 camera to a fence and set it to take 5 MP photos every 10 sec over approximately 30 minutes.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: