photo-walk at St.Petersburg (20 foto)

I had a beautiful day today, full of intresting events. In the morning I followed my babygirl to school, and witnessed a very cool scene at the tram station: sparrows flock were foraging some bread crusts. I was borrowing 150mm telephoto with me, and went away with some funny pics (I want to share them later at #FeatheredFriends community).

Dont want to touch my office duties today; lets say: the new project I was delegated today, is 'Moby Dick' by German Melville - precious classics! It would be a great pleasure and honor and nice memories to work on this great book. Who could imagine that one day I will be given such an opportunity?! Not me!!

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To be precise, the book is already done, the layout is done, and the illustrations used in this new Russian edition are not something special, but Patrik Benson's classic ones. My job on them will be some editing and pre-press.

And tomorrow we have a planned powercut and the office will be closed till Monday - this looks like a mini-holiday! The Friday seems have started very soon this week :P

And here I come to the subject of my today's blog. We decided to arrange a meeting with a nice Hivean @x-rain and have a photo-walk across the streets of St.Petersburg, the beautiful northern city we happen to share together. Daylight hours in our northern city are pretty short, so I ran away from work early, and we met at 16-30 on Palace Square, near the Winter Palace (aka the Hermitage Museum) - to enjoy some walk under the evening sunlight.

We did not have a concrete plan, we walked where our eyes led us, the winding route took us through the Summer Garden and ended near Kirochnaya Street - quite long. And of course, we talked a lot (everyone had so many news that they wanted to discuss!), But I didn't forget to take pictures when I saw something worthy of attention.

Overall, though, I didn't focus too much on photography. Consider my today's report just as a photo walk, and not a story about interesting places in the city. First of all, it is a walk in the Summer Garden.

Our meeting point, as I've already mentioned, was the Palace square -- a place where tourists and guests of the city are intercepted by special people in fancy suits ... whose unusual appearance simply appeals for a joint selfie with them. I passed two young ladies in beautiful red hussar caftans and fur hats with earflaps (!) who offered me taking a joint selfie (not for free, ofc).

But passing the Invisible Man was beyond my strength. However, I did not take a selfie but instead I portrayed him. Loved the image -- cool outlook, isnt it? Green building on the back is the Hermitage museum.

I took a few shots of iconic monument -- Alexander's Column (believe me or not, I dont have a picture of it in my archive!) - it was counter-light and didnt turn out well.

Machines" (exact address: Konyushennaya Square, 2B). The entrance to the museum marks a slot machine of a typical Soviet appearance. This museum offers a very interesting art installation: it is an interactive exhibition dedicated to the victory of the USSR football team in the first European Cup in 1960.

Three separate "locations" of this installation have characteristic speaking names: "Soviet apartment", "Сourtyard" and "Path to triumph". No, @x-rain and me didn’t entered this museum: we didn’t have such a plan, but we wanted to explore the life at the streets, not the exposition.

But this museum is very interesting, no questions -- I hope that I will still be able to explore it another time. You can get more detailed information about it here: https://euro1960.ru

And I just took a few photos of outdoors huge posters advertising this museum, they look very impressive! I changed my 150mm tele for the fisheye lens to take these photos.

Here @x-rain left his mark in eternity: as you can see, he drove past my camera during me filming.

I forgot to mention that for most of the walk we were accompanied by an @x-rain bike - he was not able to interfere with the conversation, and we did not consider it a happy idea to leave it somewhere in the parking lot and then come back.

In addition to the bicycle, you can see an old Soviet slot machine in the frame. It is made with such high quality that it makes an unconditional impression - such a device will definitely survive the Third World War!

This is the next location - the area between the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and the Mikhailovsky Garden (you can see the beautiful cast iron lattice of the garden fence made in the Art Nouveau style). For some reason I am sure that if you visit the city of St. Petersburg as a tourist, you will not pass by this place. This is a must. That is why, here every meter of the surface is dotted with souvenir sellers and their stalls. (I captured one of them to show you.)

Then we walked thru Mikhailovsky Garden, safely passing all delicacy temptations like on the photo above.

And here we stumbled upon the swans. If you come here to look at these beautiful birdies, you'd better bring a telescope or spying glass with you, because...

...because it looks like this. Terrific! I expected to see swans in this garden, but I never thought that it would turn out to be such a "prison" meeting, at a distance of 15 meters ... one would be better to watch the BBC video on YouTube instead of this!

Soon we crossed the Fontanka river channel and found ourselves entering next location - The Summer Garden (Letnii sad, named in Russian), the most famous and pretentious and fashionable garden of St.Petersburg. It was founded by order of Peter I in 1704, i.e. at the same time of the city foundation, and originally served as an imperial residence - it was not open to the public.

Over the past centuries, everything has changed many times, the garden has been destroyed and rebuilt... the last very serious reconstruction-modernization took place 10 years ago. Many townspeople spit at what their favorite promenade garden became now.

But still, it is a good place to walk, especially if you dont cherish in your memory the pictures of its former landscapes.

Actually, I dont even remember when it was the last time that I came here. (Shame on me...) Probably, a decade ago or so? Maybe, the year 2011-2012 or so. During that time I changed my job and a lot of things have changed in my life (and I cant say: 'to better').

Alleys, alleys... and more alleys.

Yes, 30 years ago the city had much fewer cars - then it was easier to take a beautiful photo ("nothing excess in the frame") ... now it becomes a tricky job at times. Obviously I didnt want cars to present in this cityscape, but theres nothing I can do about it. "Buy it - or leave it".

Even the street musician has to be up to dated and pure interactive! I see this musician even has a QR-code. He is definitely up-to-date.

I regret a little (a little!) that yesterday I was focused much more on a conversation with my friend than on taking excellent photographs -- and I am not very well at doing two things at the same time, hehe. But I still hope that I got enough images for an interesting story to entertain and educate you.