Guess what it is, in the photo?
Well, actually it is ice! A piece of ice... in the water.
The other day I saw a seductive post from my friend @tatdt that the ice of Neva-river broke. So, on Sunday my wife and I decided to get out into the city and walked for half a day.
I haven't had such a long and extensive walk in a long time! I took a camera with me, two lenses (telephoto 70-200mm and a wide angle 16-35mm), and most importantly, my fat wallet... as some experienced travelers say, the most important accessory that may replaces your back pack, lol. 😉
I took 600 photos, certainly they deserve more than one post. Today I will quickly tell you where we were and what we saw without going into too much detail.
So, the ice... now the Neva is free of ice and flows freely, although small pieces of ice are floating here and there. We walked along the Fontanka River, and then went out to the Neva embankment, stood on the bridge, admiring the view of the city and watching the seagulls bask in the sun, sitting on the ice floes. A funny thing - as Neva current carried the ice floes under the bridge, the seagulls from time to time found themselves in the shade, which they did not like and had to fly non-stop from shaded ice floes to the sunny ones. Mesmerising!
Embankment of the Fontanka River.
Here we met a few fishermen, and right in front of my eyes one of them pulled out of the water a huge perch - 200 grams (and immediately released back into the water; this is fair game, a sport, not foraging). It's nice to witness scenes like this... long live life and biodiversity!
Another interesting encounter was this unusual retro car. It is so unusual and distinguishes from the whole traffic with its shapes that I noticed it even from the opposite bank of the river, about 300 meters away (of course, to take photos I moved closer to it). In fact, this is a sightseeing bus created on purpose to serve tourists. The tourists are taken on city tours not only on horses and boats, but also on such retro cars. Extra service is an extra competitive advantage in the tourist business which of course is a solid rivalry. It looks awesome ... but personally, I have never been inside such a car.
Next stop was near the 1st Engineer Bridge. I pass by this place from time to time, but rarely take photos: one need to have a telephoto and the sun in the right position to get correct lightning for shooting this scene... what's so special here, you may ask? Maybe a similar monument is arranged in every European city, I don't know to be honest. It's a small 11 cm high figure, deliberately placed at a hard-to-reach spot, and provided with a typical urban legend: if you make a wish and throw a coin so it does not fall into the water and remains on the pedestal, the wish will come true. I'm not so convinced about this (but if you believe it, then of course this is exactly what will happen).
That indeed is a challenge! but you can see in the photo above, the mission is not impossible.
At any rate, the coin divers and archaeologists of the future gonna benefit from this solidly, thats for sure. What do you think about it, @x-rain?
Just a few steps aside from the Chizhik Monument there is another interesting spot to check, but it is well-hidden and ain't many people are in the know of it. This is a courtyard inside an ordinary apartment building, a courtyard that hides some real art treasures of contemporary art. @grindle, I gladly invite you to explore this spot with me. For about thirty years (!) an art studio has been decorating the yard with all kinds of colored mosaics. You can imagine how many interesting things have been created here over such a long period. Of course, you can always see tourists in the courtyard.
The yard is huge... this is only one corner, only one wall worth exploring! but there is much more to it.
By the way, thats a bench in the photo; its creators obviously aware of Antonio Gaudi )))
My wife sat on it for a while waiting, while I was crawling around the yard on my knees.
Talking about art: we encountered a lot of street musicians during our walk, several of them contributed to me some stunning images; a few shots I took definitely worthy to be included in the top-50 best photos of the year.
The first of them plays a musical instrument, which he calls himself a 'bottle-o-phone' -- @juancar347, @mipiano, @tatdt -- have you ever seen something like this?
By the way, it's not the first time I see him: he has his favorite spot in the garden near Petrogradskaya metro, if you head there next weekend, very likely you will see him too.
After the "bottle-o-phone," everything else seems so trivial and not even worthy of attention and capturing... two accordionists, one guitarist and one ukulele player.
Yes! St.Petersburg once again confirmed its status of the "cultural capital of Russia".
When I was photographing an accordionist, a nice story happened to me, even two. A smiling young man, impressed by the size of my 200mm lens, asked me to take his photo - and even expressed his strong (!) willingness to pay me money (!). I took three takes, completely free of charge, and he loved the photos - good lighting works wonders.
And here's the second story: I took a blind photo of a couple cuddling (two fast blind takes), they noticed me, I smiled back and slipped away. Imagine my surprise when 3-5 minutes later the guy caught up with me and talked out getting those photos, which he considered precious for him. As it turned out later, he was also a photographer (!). And photographing a photographer is an old and venerable job, cause, well, who else is going to take pictures of you, if not your friends on the walk? or strangers like me...
Perhaps, in the future, a join photo-walk may come out of this random acquaintance... at least I would love that. Meeting people is easy!
The vicinity of Petrogradskaya metro station, where we found ourselves by that time, is a wonderful place, there are a lot of interesting things here, including some very curious monuments. One of them is statues of famous architects of St. Petersburg ... It's a great way to get in touch with the bronze history and to take splendid selfies :) The kids went crazy about it, they love the possibility to get on their laps to these statues and do whatever they want.
And you may imagine, for a street photographer this is also a great benefitting opportunity.
Next to this place is a site... I don't know what to call it - a whole complex depicting the iconic buildings of the city, on a scale, of course. This scale makes it easier for people to see and study these wonderful buildings - St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Rostral Columns, the Winter Palace... This is definitely an interesting monument, generating not only knowledge in the heads of children, but also a lot of fun (and cool pictures, I note in parenthesis!) When I do more photos, I will definitely tell about it in a separate post.
I beg your patience, this is not the end of the walk yet, but we are nearing the end :) . Another great encounter: I went to the sounds of music, and I saw... no, it wasn't an organist, although very similar kind of retro music was coming from a tape recorder. It was a puppet theater performer, and his dozen puppets - he was giving a free show for children and anyone passing by. Gorgeous puppets, and a great show to follow.
Watching all the happy children's faces was even a greater pleasure for me.
Here a pleasant load of impressions and "buzzing" feet demanded a pause - so we have finished our walk by stopping at a wonderful Wolchek coffee shop. This is a large franchise, one may find quite a few of these cafes across the city - my wife and I really like what they do (all the work is handmade with love and they really do not abuse artificial additives). The calm no-kitch design of the halls also pleases our eyes a lot, and the prices are quite democratic.
We got two lattes and delicious pastry... it was a nice point in our outing. I really haven't had such a beautiful outdoors Sunday in a long time! The post also goes for #SublimeSunday challenge created by @c0ff33a and #BeautifulSunday challenge initiated by @ace108
| location: | St.Petersburg, Russia | April 2023 | natural light |
| camera/lens: | Canon 5D, Â 70-200mm | 16-35mm | raw-conv |
Thanks for walking with me -- see you next time!
