- Blue and white Rococco Architecture of the Smolny Cathedral and Convent
These beautiful buildings sit on the bank of the Neva River. The three onion domes on the cathedral can be seen from all over St. Petersburg. The cathedral was designed by the Italian architect Rastrelli for Peter the Great to house his daughter when she decided to become a nun. She changed her mind later and did rule Russia. I guess it seemed like more fun to be the Czarina than to be a nun. I had my wide angled lens on it’s widest here. I did get some distortion but remedied that in Photoshop. I think it is always good to take an overview of something like this. It is so magnificent that it needs to be seen in all its glory.
- The land of Tolstoy, Turgenev and Pushkin still exists on the Volga
I did some ‘fixing’ to this landscape because I wanted it to look as if it were an illustration in an old book. I have a photograph of the bark of a crepe myrtle tree which I changed from the greenish color to a gold. Then I pasted it over my landscape. I changed the blend mode to overlay and adjusted the opacity until it suited me.