Photographs by Rosemary

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The back facade of Catherine the Great's favorite summer palace. There are many palaces in this area. Tsarskoye Selo means "Czar's village" and it is located near Pushkin, the ancestral home of one of Russia's foremost poets and authors. The reflecting pools were built to enhance the palace architecture and were a part of the original architects plan. The architects of St. Petersburg were from Europe: Italian, German and Dutch.A gallery in the Hermitage. Now it is one of the foremost art museums in the world, but originally was the Winter Palace built on the Neva River in the 1700's.In the garden of the Summer Palace. These were lime or Linden trees. Catherine could stroll here with her many paramours. I liked the geopmetry of this shot. Four triangles converging in the center.Lake Ladoga, Europe's largest fresh water lake. It was like sailing on the ocean, but very calm waters. At times the water seemed as if it were made of blue silk.Kizhi Island. The chuch of the Transfiguration on Kizhi was built in the 1700's. There are 22 cupolas or onion domes. No nails or metal ties were used in the construction, only wood joins. This type of woodwork is done by the ancient tribes of the region, Karelian, Vepps, Slavs. It is on Lake Onega, the second largest lake in Europe. Kizhi Island was the place I was most looking forward to. I had seen photographs of this church and wanted badly to photograph it myself. As we disembarked, the rain began to pelt down. Of course, I had no umbrella. Luckily, an enterprising Keralian woman was selling them as we got on land. Have you ever tried to keep yourself dry in a downpour while composing a photo? During a brief respite from the rain, I ran across some fields to use a haystack as foreground and tripped, tearing my pants and gouging my knee. Still, I pressed on. It was most likely my only chance to photograph this church. Turns out my best shots were from the boat!Sunrise on Lake Ladoga. I awoke at 4am one night and decided to look out of the window. The sun was just setting. I grabbed my camera and started shooting. A few minutes later the sun was below the horizon and I expected it to become dark. But in a matter of seconds, I could see the sun's glow becoming brighter and brighter and soon it had risen above the horizon. Day had arrived only a few minutes after nightfall. Truly, it was a spiritual experience for me.The sun is low in the sky at 9:30 pm and the forests of northern Russia are bathed in its glow. Now and then we would pass a small village but mostly it was pristine nature.As we approached the ancient city of Yaroslavl, we passed many villages on the Volga river each with its own beautiful church or monastery.A grandmotherly woman in Uglich. She was selling postcards for some extra money. Although I made her look rather poor by darkening the photo in places, actually she was well-dressed and well-fed. It was perhaps not good of me to change the photo, but I wanted a stereotype! The elderly people of Russia are having it hard now as their pensions are not enough to keep them fed and housed. They are forced to earn what they can in any way they can.Some of the waterways our boat sailed were man made and forests, villages and churches had been flooded.An artist on Moscow's Arbat Street. This is a pedestrian area where artists and musicians hope to make some money. This man had a box full of spray paint and was painting striking, surreal landscapes in a matter of about 10 minutes per painting. He used several objects as templates and sprayed them skillfully. He wore a rather shabby face mask and I worried that he would soon have some kind of lung disease. I hope not.A sample of spray surrealism by the Arbat Street artist.A man playing a sort of harmonica on Arbat Street. He has an audience of one, but at least the audience is paying attention.The iconostasis in the Church of The Dormition which is inside the Kremlin. It is this church where many Czars were crowned including Nicholas II. The Iconostasis is a wall of religious paintings and is an important part of the Liturgy of the Orthodox Church.Moscow drive-by. A glimpse of a corner of the Kremlin wall.In the Moscow subway. The escalators are quite steep and maybe this woman's job is to watch for anyone falling down one of them. I noticed the Russians, some of them, tilted backward as they rode downwards.We were in the subway on a Sunday, so traffic was light. On a workday it would be a jam. More than 9 million people use the subway every day, well, except for Sunday. Pensioners ride free and others also get a discount. Still the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg were a traffic nightmare.A woman prays in the Monastery of Sergei Posad about 30 or so miles from Moscow.
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The back facade of Catherine the Great's favorite summer palace. There are many palaces in this area. Tsarskoye Selo means "Czar's village" and it is located near Pushkin, the ancestral home of one of Russia's foremost poets and authors. The reflecting pools were built to enhance the palace architecture and were a part of the original architects plan. The architects of St. Petersburg were from Europe: Italian, German and Dutch.



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